The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (30 page)

The first place I go is down to the launch bays.

The Lancer looks old, abused—very little like the
sleek dart of a ship that first appeared so gracefully out of
nowhere when we still thought we were the only people left alive on
this planet. Morales had to pull the port-forward turret, too
damaged by Disc grenades, leaving a gaping hole. In exchange she
bolted missile launchers under the wings, scavenged from a broken
ASV. And she had to do some body work. What’s left of the black
stealth skin is mostly patchwork. Scrap titanium has been fused
over the left side of the cockpit like an eyepatch, covering the
blast damage that took Matthew. Extra insulating material has been
bolted under the nose, forming a shield she hopes will shape the
EMP “gun” so it can be fired safely over the base. The landing
gear—extensively rebuilt—no longer retracts.

But I came to see the pilot, not the ship.

“Officer on deck!” Acaveda shouts.

“Keep working,” I order. Smith sees me and climbs
down out of the forward belly lock.

“Colonel,” he greets evenly.

“Captain,” I return. “You understand your
objectives?”

“Yes, sir. Avoid the little buggers. Kill the big
ones first.”

“And try not to get killed,” I add. “Being pissed-off
is expected, Captain. Use it. But don’t forget you’re an asset, and
we don’t have a lot of those. Don’t let anger get you dead.”

“I’ll accept that from someone who knows, sir,” he
gives me.

“I’ve been killing people with my rage since I was in
my twenties,” I let him know. “But I’m a bit of a freak—it works
for me. I can stay cool, objective.
Thinking
.”

“I know you and Colonel Burke were close,” he has to
say.

“You don’t need to pay that back for me. You’re
good—do your job. We’ll watch your flanks.”

“So will I, sir,” a voice comes from behind me. It’s
Lieutenant Jane. His flight suit has been modified to expose his
prosthetic right hand. I remember he’s been training on the
Lancer’s guns as part of his rehab (and as part of a protocol to
get more gunners trained so that the Lancer wouldn’t be exclusive
to the command team, because losing Matthew was too expensive).

“I’d ask you if you were ready for this, Lieutenant,”
I give him, “but I know the answer. What I told Captain Smith goes
for you, too.”

“Yes, sir. I’m in no hurry to see Doc Ryder again,
sir.”

“Go,” I tell them. Then I check in with Acaveda,
Hanson, Soto and Jeffers—the crews of my remaining two ASVs. I want
to send them all off face-to-face, not over a Link.

Rios and Thomas confirm their H-A units are ready.
Rios has taken the advance team himself: four squads with chain
guns and launchers ready to surface from the greenhouse, which will
put them close up under the enemy. Tru has added a dozen of her own
to this little foray.

Tru is with me up in the Command Tower for this one,
something I agreed to since she’s put so many of her own people
into this fight.

“You hate this part as much as I do?” she asks me as
we wait.

“You have no idea,” I say, too quickly to regret
it.

“I might,” Tru coolly reminds me of her experience
sending her friends against my guns.

Sakina is also with me. I want her to watch, learn,
assess. This kind of fight is so far beyond what she’s used to,
what she’s trained for. I hope she can adapt somehow.

True to his word, Chang’s fleet hasn’t budged. The
clock is running down on his ultimatum.

We have nine minutes left when I get confirmation
that everything is spun up and ready. I hesitate for one long
breath, give Tru a nod, then:

“Hit ‘em.”

The blast shields slam down over the ports on the
towers. The only view I’ll get now is on the screens. And I
immediately feel the burning frustration of being removed from the
fight yet again.

The launch bay doors open fast, and our three ships
burn straight up out of the bays. They fire a brace of missiles as
soon as they’re up off the deck, locked on the big airships. Our
base batteries spin and fire, and our launchers start emptying
downrange.

Chang’s display of force makes for an easy target.
The Discs immediately dart for the base in response, but they’re
designed to evade incoming fire, not stop it.

The pirate airships don’t move fast, and they get
caught hard. I see multiple explosions on their gun decks and gas
hulls, and masts of sails start dropping in flames. I think I can
see bodies fall as well.

Rios gets me a better view. The small fighters are
starting to detach from the underside of the airships in twos and
threes, but probably not as orderly as they would if hell wasn’t
breaking loose above them. His troopers dash out and dig in, and
start popping rockets up into the underbellies of the pirate ships,
trying to chew up as many of the small fighters as they can before
they can break away. And almost immediately I read fire coming up
from the direction of the Nomad campsite—they were ready and
waiting to throw their guns in with ours. The sky begins raining
scrap and bodies.

Chang’s new ship isn’t nearly so easy. The big
cross-shape tips hard and turns its big lift fans into props.
Despite its size, it moves very much like an attack helicopter. I
can almost see the deck crews hanging on by some kind of harness,
reminding me of stuntmen that would stand on flying biplane wings.
And the crews are much quicker on the guns (assuming the guns are
aimed by people and not AI). Rios’ troopers start getting hammered
by return fire and have to grab the limited cover of the terrain. I
watch as three H-A suits show breaches and vitals crashing. I don’t
take time to look at their names.

The pirate ships manage to get a volley back at us,
but their cannons got thrown off by the pounding. I feel strikes
into the exposed concrete of this tower, and Battery One loses a
gun. Kastl sends another brace of rockets into them as fast as the
racks can reload. Unfortunately for the Zodangans, as they turn to
evade, they present bigger targets. The ship on their left flank
starts to sag, fold, and sink slowly towards ground.

Our aircraft burn fast right at them. The Discs spray
them as they intersect, but seem confused when the pilots just
ignore them. The flips and reversals they do to pursue look almost
sloppy. It takes them a full two seconds to rethink their strategy,
breaking off half their number to focus on our batteries.

“Thomas, go!” I order. More H-A suits pour out of our
airlocks, firing as they go, laying a storm of chain rounds for the
Discs to fly into. The battery guns ignore the incoming Discs and
spray at the ones chasing our aircraft. I hear Kastl whoop
victoriously as he knocks one off Acaveda’s tail.

Thomas’ troopers manage to score another one as it
dives at Battery Two. But they can’t save Battery One, which gets
busted by Disc charges. MAI reads it offline. The Discs then shift
targets and start spraying at the troopers, hunkered down behind
the makeshift skirmish lines Thomasen had plowed when he started
reburying the base. I hear shouting and cursing, and two more suits
go dead. The math that we’ve probably killed a lot more pirates
isn’t at all comforting.

Smith is burning fast to try to shake the Disc on his
tail. Jane can’t get a shot, so he turns his guns into the growing
swarm of light fighters—MAI counts eighteen so far that have gotten
air without getting chewed in our crossfire. Their wings have
folded out, giving them the appearance of a bee with Icarus wings
and swim fins: two big fat wings on pivoting struts and two tail
wings on a smaller frame. The way the wings move makes the little
fighter dart and bob like a swallow in flight, or the way I’ve seen
penguins swim. Jane is lucky to hit two of them before Smith has to
veer off to avoid getting peppered by their nose guns.

The Disc is still on his tail. Then he has to shoot
skyward because Chang’s ship suddenly comes up in his path. MAI
records hits to the Lancer’s wings and midsection. One of the VTOL
engines threatens to fail. Jane hits back at the cross ship,
strafing the decks. I see a few bodies jerk and tumble from its
decks, but the ship itself looks unhurt.

“Cross!” Acaveda shouts at him, and Smith jerks hard
to port, letting Acaveda’s ASV cut under him. She pounds two
rockets into Chang’s starboard wing, punching sizable holes in it
but not destabilizing it.

Smith still has his Disc on his tail, and is now
starting to lose a rear engine. Jane is cursing as he tries to get
a target. In the Lancer’s forward feed, I suddenly see the other
pirate ship come up broadside. Fast.

“Smith!” I try.

“Sorry, Colonel,” he comes back, breathless. “I may
need to break your ship…”

He fires his last missiles into the pirate’s gas
hull, then dives almost directly into the resulting fireball. In
his feed, I see fire and smoke and debris. From below, Rios shows
me the dart-like Lancer pierce the side of the airship on full
burn. Then in an instant, it bursts out the other side. Still
flying.

Smith is laughing like a maniac. Jane is calling him
some choice names.

The Disc went into the airship with him—too tight on
his tail to anticipate what was coming—but did not come out. The
airship begins to break up, collapse, and as it does a lazy spin it
drops into the path of three of the little fighters. Rios watches
them smash into their “mother” and fall in pieces.

Soto isn’t so lucky: The Disc on his ASV is avoiding
Jeffer’s guns, and is clinging too close for ground fire to try to
knock it off of him. I watch the starboard wing blow apart, watch
one of the fuel tanks flame. Soto tries to keep the ship under
control, but is losing it. Acaveda comes down on him, and Hanson
manages to clip the Disc that’s killing him. But the drone chooses
its fate and slams itself into Soto’s tail. The detonation blows
away the entire aft section of the ship. The cockpit goes tumbling
into the dunes.

Battery Three blows up before I can pay attention to
anything else. MAI’s reconstruct flashes me a Disc taking a beating
from Thomas’ ground fire and deciding to go down with a price.

Chang’s ship is starting to take hits from below, but
isn’t limping yet. It pivots and sprays at Rios’ troopers, then
concentrates fire on the ridge of plowed dirt that covers the
tubeway from the base to the greenhouse. MAI’s alarms tell me the
tubeway is holed, damaged. Chang is trying to keep more of our
suits from sneaking up under him, or trying to cut off their
retreat. Then he slides south and comes at us from a weaker flank,
where we’re shorter on guns.

Metzger is hitting at him with the small AP turrets
on Aircom, and Thomas is sending rockets, but Chang’s ship keeps
weaving. It slides over the base to the east, and pounds the
aircraft bays with charges—he must not know we’re out of ships
anyway. The blast doors hold, but take a beating that may take them
offline. Our rockets burst on his hull, shredding his ship by bits,
but it still isn’t visibly suffering.

Acaveda is getting swarmed by the little fighters.
They’re almost as hard to hit as the Discs. It’s like shooting into
a swarm of mosquitoes. The big pirate ships are down, burning in
the sand—I can see survivors running for cover. Overhead, the thick
billowing smoke flattens into pseudo-thunderheads as it hits the
atmosphere net.

Smith tries to get back to the fight, back to help
Acaveda, but the Lancer isn’t turning well, and two engines have
flamed out. This makes him and easy target for the swarm of
fighters, and I watch the hull and wings get peppered. MAI flashes
me more alarms.

“I’m empty!” Jane shouts, a mix of terror and rage as
his turrets are spent.

“Acaveda, get clear!” Smith orders.

“Clear is where, Captain?” she spits back, her own
systems beginning to quit.

“Up, out, don’t care,” Smith tells her. “Just not in
the middle. Burn it.”

“Burning,” she tells him, blasting her engines and
jerking up out of the swarm of fighters. Smith is bearing down into
the middle of them. He’s charged his EMP gun.

“We’re done here,” he announces. “Last call…”

When the EMP blows, it swats a good handful of the
incoming fighters out of control, tumbling dead into the dunes. Two
more limp away, their controls apparently compromised. But Smith
has lost the Lancer. The remaining fighters cost him his last
engine and most of his starboard wing. He struggles to hold on,
using his maneuvering jets as brakes, half gliding and half
tumbling into the dunes.

“Hope I’ve gotten better with practice…” I hear him
joke. Two seconds later, his hull is skidding through the dunes,
throwing up waves of sand and gravel. It finally comes to a stop,
mostly buried—only the tail is visible. His systems are all dead.
No feed.

Acaveda banks and heads back for the base, trailing
fighters like angry wasps. She’s hoping to bring them into range of
our ground guns, and she comes low over Rios’ positions. The
troopers manage to cut two off her tail. The swarm breaks up—I
count eleven left in the air—and like the Discs, split forces to
hit the ground troops and the remaining ASV.

Battery One goes offline. I’ve also got thirteen H-A
suits reading as dead, and cold Links from seven of Tru’s civilian
soldiers. Six more have been dragged back inside with various
gunshot and shrapnel wounds. Ryder’s trauma team is already
busy.

The remaining Disc is holding Thomas and her troopers
at bay, adapting tactics to keep them from getting a decent shot,
toying with them. More suits go dead. I want to tell her to fall
back, get inside, but Chang is still flying, his ship’s guns
picking off our remaining batteries.

Rios has nowhere to go, pinned down by Chang’s light
fighters. His troopers can’t score them, the shifting wings riding
the winds like fighting kites. MAI tells me ammo is running low.
I’m hoping Chang’s ships run empty before we do. But if he can just
send for more…