Battlefield Mars Read online

  “Will do.”

  “Maintain radio silence until further notice.” Archard very much doubted the Martians could listen in, or that they could understand human speech if they did.

  Increasing power to the thrusters, Archard flew in a small practice loop. They took some getting used to, like the throttle on a motorcycle. Too much power, and he might tumble out of control. The RAM responded superbly.

  Archard made for the Broadcast Center. The last he’d seen, Martians were up on the roof, destroying everything. Two hundred meters out, he slowed until he seemed to be floating.

  The dishes, the towers, the arrays, had all been demolished.

  Disrupting enemy communications was a basic military tactic. It set Archard to wondering why the Martians hadn’t thought to attack the Atmosphere Center, as well. In one fell swoop they could wipe out the colony. Could it be the Martians didn’t recognize the Atmosphere Center’s importance? Or was there a more sinister reason at work?

  His musing was cut short by the patter of running feet and a shriek of mortal terror.

  Archard locked on the glowing holo image of a woman with a child in her arms fleeing down a street, and boosted power. His motion sensors told him that ‘something’ was after them, but once again the Martians failed to register as discreet heat signatures.

  In seconds, he was over the woman. He heard her panting and the child whimper.

  Six Martians scuttled in pursuit.

  “Help us!” the mother shouted to the empty buildings she was passing. “Help us, please!”

  It struck Archard that the Martians weren’t moving as fast as they could, which suggested they were deliberating hanging back, perhaps so the woman would lead them to more humans.

  Archard came down fast and hard between the creatures and their quarry, spreading his legs and using his left arm to lessen the impact.

  Abruptly stopping, the Martians raised their stalk eyes. The RAM was something they hadn’t seen before, and they studied it, as was their habit.

  “Keep running,” Archard boomed at the woman without turning his head. “Get to safety.” He didn’t look to see if she obeyed.

  Pointing his left arm, he was about to unleash a weapon but changed his mind. The RAM was supposed to be practically impervious to a physical assault. Now was as good a time as any to put that to test.

  Bunching the battle suit’s enormous fists, Archard plowed into the Martians. One ran up his leg almost to his waist and he brought his fists together, reducing the creature to pulp. He punched another that jumped at his chest, splitting it open. Two others attacked from either side. He grabbed the quickest by a leg and swung it against the other and both dropped in pieces.

  That left two. The nearest sprang at his helmet. Catching it as if it were a ball, he tore the thing in half.

  Archard laughed in sheer savage joy. The feeling of raw power was intoxicating. The creatures had hardly touched him, and there was only one left.

  To his surprise, the survivor was fleeing back down the street.

  Raising his arm, Archard keyed in a dart.

  The creature was a block away and moving like a bat out of Hades when Archard fired. The RAM’s in-board targeting was spot-on. The dart struck the Martian in the center of its body mass and broke into a hundred tiny flechettes that ripped through the creature like so many razors. The thing crashed down, riddled.

  Surveying the slaughter, Archard nodded in satisfaction. He was on the verge of taking to the air to go find more Martians when a timid voice stopped him.

  “Mister? Can you hear me in there?”

  40

  She was young, in her late twenties, her long black hair disheveled from her flight. “I thought we were dead. What are those things?”

  Archard had met her a couple of times. “Trisna, isn’t it? Trisna Sahir? From New Delhi?”

  “That’s me,” Trisna said, and indicated her daughter, who was clinging to her neck. “This is Behula.” She rose onto the tips of her toes, the better to see his helmet. “Captain Rahn, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Remind me where you work again.”

  “The Supply Center. In Dispersals.” Trisna regarded the dead Martians. “Behula and I, we like to take walks at night and gaze at the stars. Tonight we ran into those things.” She shivered and held her daughter closer.

  “You didn’t hear my warning?”

  “What warning?”

  Archard wondered how many others hadn’t heard. “I’ll explain on the way.” Bending at the knees, he beckoned, then lowered the RAM’s arms to ground level.

  “What are you doing?” Trisna said.

  “Climb on.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There are a lot more of those things loose in the colony. I need to take you and your daughter to U.N.I.C. headquarters so I can get out and help others like you.”

  Moving as if she were walking on glass, Trisna brought Behula over. She set her daughter on top of his right arm, climbed up, then cradled Behula while stretching her legs over his other arm.

  “Hold on,” Archard cautioned, and slowly rose a couple of meters into the air.

  Trisna gasped, and the girl cried out.

  “You’re perfectly safe,” Archard assured them. “I won’t drop you.” Still, he didn’t rise any higher. Gradually accelerating, he contacted Private Everett and related the latest.

  “How many people have these horrible things killed?” Trisna asked when he was done.

  “I don’t know,” Archard said. “I hope to round up as many survivors as I can.”

  “You’ll have to go door to door, won’t you?” Trisna said. “That could take forever. With those awful things ready to attack you at any time.”

  “I handled those,” Archard said. But she had a point. Even in the RAM, it would take hours to search the entire colony. And the suit was so huge, he couldn’t enter any of the house modules; he wouldn’t fit through the doors or airlocks.

  “It’s too bad you can’t do as we had to in India,” Trisna said. “You might have heard. We had a monkey problem. Millions overran our cities. We couldn’t kill them because, you know, we’re Hindu. The government tried catching them but monkeys are clever little buggers. So they hired special workers to lure the monkeys away. It’s unfortunate you can’t do the same, yes?”

  “Yes,” Archard said, as the seed of a new idea took root.

  The ready room at U.N.I.C. headquarters was small but had twelve chairs, enough for the meeting Archard had called. He stood at the front of the room, his arms crossed. “Input?”

  “Are you sure about this, sir?” Private Pasco said. “What if it doesn’t work?”

  Archard had detailed his plan to the two troopers and the women. Katla and Trisna were civilians but their lives were at stake and they had a right to offer their opinions. “Then we’re no worse off than we already are.”

  “Except we could lose you,” Private Everett said.

  “Yes,” Katla quietly interjected. “There’s that.” Her eyes were pools of worry. “Realistically, what are your chances of making it out alive?”

  Archard shrugged. “The important thing is to lure the Martians out of New Meridian and give Everett and Pasco time to go door to door.”

  “The search will go faster if the doctor and I help,” Trisna said. Her daughter was perched on her knees. “I want to, and I’m sure Dr. Dkany feels the same.”

  Katla nodded.

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Everett said, “but it’s too dangerous. You ladies should stay here where it’s safe.”

  “For how long?” Trisna said. “Based on what Captain Rahn told us, unless something drastic is done, the colony will soon be overrun. Or am I wrong?” She stared at Archard.

  “The RAM can only hold the Martians off for so long,” Archard said. He might kill hundreds, even thousands, but in the end, he’d expend all the suit’s armaments, and they would be at the Martians’ mercy.

  “Something else to th
ink about,” Katla said. “It’s only a matter of time before the Martians think to hit the Atmosphere Center. When that goes down, we’re all dead.”

  “They haven’t yet,” Pasco said. “Maybe they’re not that bright.”

  “Or maybe they have a reason for not wiping us all out,” Katla said.

  Archard spoke up. “Whether they hit the A. C. or cause a breach that sucks out all the air, the result will be the same.” He shook his head. “No, my plan is best. We must evacuate New Meridian. To do that, we need to lure the Martians away. I can think of only one way to do that.”

  “And if you don’t come back?” Private Everett bluntly asked.

  “You resort to Plan B,” Archard said. “Gather up all the survivors you can find and take them to the farm farthest from the volcano. Use the tank and every rover in the colony. You might have to make two or three trips but get it done. Then wait to be rescued. Someone is bound to come from the other colonies, eventually.”

  “We hope,” Pasco said.

  Katla surprised Archard by coming up and placing her hand on his arm. “I know better than to try and talk you out of this. Don’t let those things kill you.”

  “I’ll try my best,” Archard said.

  41

  The stars were brighter outside the dome. In Mars’ rarefied atmosphere, they gleamed like diadems in a celestial crown.

  Archard would need every bit of power the RAM could muster when he reached his destination, so for the moment he didn’t engage the thrusters. In incredible leaps, he traveled to a point two hundred meters due north of New Meridian.

  Planting the line of sensors was easy. He simply shoved the spikes they were attached to into the ground. To counter the jamming, which he had yet to account for, he set up a portable relay that amplified the sensors’ signals. He tapped the button for the test circuit, and the signal light glowed. “Everett, are you reading these?”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Good luck, sir.”

  Archard turned his faceplate to the heavens and activated the thrusters. The RAM swept so swiftly into the sky, it was breathtaking. Speed was essential. Any time now, the Martians inside the dome could penetrate U.N.I.C. headquarters.

  At full power, Archard streaked across the Martian sky, a human meteor out for vengeance. He had a GPS lock on Albor Tholus, and in less than ten minutes he arced in over the towering cone. Slowing, he hovered and peered electronically into the volcano’s foreboding depths.

  Archard was about to take the fight to the Martians. It was his hope, his prayer, that a direct assault on their underground warren would cause the creatures in New Meridian to rush to the aid of their crustoid brethren. He was the lure that would draw the things out, and hopefully buy Everett and the others the time they needed to complete their search.

  “So where are you?” Archard said aloud. The RAM registered no life at all. Small wonder the orbiting satellites hadn’t, either.

  Archard wished he had a nuke. That would be the easy away. Drop one in and get the hell out, and goodbye Martians. But the brass hadn’t seen any need for nukes on Mars.

  Archard clicked his comm-link. “HQ, this is Captain Rahn. Do you read me?” Static crackled in his earphones. “Of course not,” he said, and got down to business.

  The RAM’S life support system was green, all weapons systems were green, the power bar had barely gone down. The battle suit was as ready as it was ever going to be.

  Archard took a deep breath and slowly let it out. Some would say he was about to commit suicide, that he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of descending into the dark heart of the Martian enclave and making it out alive. If so, so be it. This was the only way he could think of to save as many colonists as possible.

  Archard thought of his parents back on Earth, he thought of his sister, happily married, and her kids. He remembered, of all things, a dog he’d had as a boy, and how much he’d loved that mutt.

  Shaking himself, Archard tilted the thrusters and gained speed. The caldera expanded until it was a giant maw spread wide to devour him.

  A lone speck in the middle of the thirty-kilometer hole, Archard swooped into the bowels of the Martian underground. Down, and down, and down even more. A kilometer. A kilometer and a half. Two.

  The walls of the caldera flared outward to become the roof of the vast cavern.

  Below, a legion of alien adversaries were going about their regular routines. He’d caught them completely by surprise.

  “Our turn, you bastards,” Archard declared, and dived to the attack. Cleaving the air at full power, he hurtled at a broad walkway crowded with creatures. The RAM struck with the force of a cannonball. The walkway was basalt, as hard as iron, but not even iron could withstand over a ton of brutal impact from a metal ten times harder. The walkway shattered, raining debris, and Martians.

  Arcing up and around, Archard spied a high tower with arched doorways and windows. A lot of Martians were going in and out. Zeroing in, he let fly with a missile from a forearm gauntlet. Like an arrow from a bow, it flashed across the intervening space. The blast enveloped the entire tower in a billowing ball of fire.

  To his left and slightly below, a squat structure sat on a wide shelf. Drawn by the fireball, Martians by the score rushed out, their stalks waving wildly.

  Banking, Archard opened up with the RAM’s M537 Minigun. At a cyclic rate of five thousand rounds a minute, the lead chewed through the creatures like hot nails through butter. Shredded Martians pitched over the shelf or fell where they stood.

  By now, the entire beehive had awakened to his attack, and nearly every Martian in sight had stopped what they were doing to fix their multifaceted eyes on the RAM.

  Archard couldn’t resist; he bellowed in fierce glee and dived toward the largest building in sight, a virtual basalt castle half a kilometer lower. He reasoned that the bigger the structure, the more important it must be, and the more likely that it contained the Martians’ leaders.

  Creatures poured from within. The reddish round ones, the larger blue ones. On a balcony appeared something new; a yellow being three meters high, the only one of its kind he had seen so far.

  Archard resorted to the RAM’S ion cannon. His first beam cut the yellow creature in half. His next reduced a dozen Martians to severed wrecks. Pirouetting up and away to gain distance, he selected a Penetrator, the most devastating missile in the RAM’s arsenal, centered the holo’s crosshairs on the castle, and said, “Fire.”

  Designed with a top speed of fifteen thousand kilometers per hour, the Penetrator was almost too fast for the human eye to follow. It hit exactly where the computer told it to hit. An artificial sun lit the cavern, a blinding-white nova that atomized the castle and everything around it.

  Archard neglected to brace for the shock wave and paid for his mistake by tumbling helmet over boots for a good fifty meters. When he came to a stop, he righted the RAM and scoured his vicinity for more targets. He mustn’t give the Martians a moment’s respite. The more destruction he caused, the more likely the Martians in New Meridian would be compelled to come to their aid.

  His major advantage was flight. He could wreak havoc immune from retaliation. Or so he assumed until he happened to look down.

  Another new kind of Martians had appeared, and these could fly. A whole swarm of them was rising toward him.

  42

  Dr. Katla Dkany stood behind the two soldiers, holding Piotr. Trisna was beside her with Behula. Both children had fallen asleep. Katla was thankful for that. They had been through harrowing ordeals, Piotr in particular. And the sad part was, their ordeals weren’t over.

  “Come on, come on,” the trooper from Kentucky was saying. He and the Spaniard were glued to a console in the command center.

  “Please keep your voice down,” Trisna said quietly.

  Private Everett glanced at her and went to reply, then looked at Behula and at Piotr, and turned back to the radio. “Sure
, lady,” he said, not as loudly.

  “The captain should be at the volcano by now,” Private Pasco said. “We should know soon.”

  “Keep everything crossed,” Private Everett said.

  “I’m glad I’m not the pessimist you are,” Pasco said, and beamed. “My mother always said I am an optimist at heart.”

  “Yeah, well,” Everett said, “where I come from, an optimist is somebody who goes through life with blinders on.”

  “Blinders?”

  “Like a horse.”

  “People aren’t horses.”

  “You’d think,” Everett said, and stiffened. “Look! Motion readings. A lot of them.”

  Pasco thrust his chin over Everett’s shoulder. “It’s working. The things are leaving the colony. They’re heading for the volcano, just like the captain predicted they would.”

  “We can begin the search,” Trisna said. She didn’t sound happy at the prospect.

  “We’ll wait a few minutes to be sure all the Martians are gone,” Everett said.

  “Some might not leave,” Katla felt it necessary to mention.

  “That is my worry,” Trisna said.

  Everett swiveled in his chair. “Ladies, you don’t have to help. You can stay in the tank with your kids.”

  “No,” Katla said. “I told Archard I would, and I will.”

  “I, as well,” Trisna said.

  “Suit yourselves,” Everett said. “But the kids don’t leave the tank for any reason. Are you okay with that?”

  “Mustn’t they?” Trisna said.

  “You can’t fight with your girl in your arms,” Everett said. “We’re issuing each of you a weapon. In fact, let’s do that right now. I’ll show you how to use them.”

  Katla was surprised at how light the ICW felt. Everett explained that a microchip controlled the various functions. He showed them the selector settings, and warned them not to shoot a fragmentation grenade unless they were a good thirty meters from the target. The killing radius was fifteen meters; the extra margin was to be safe.