The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds (31 page)

Rockets suddenly arc over the base from the ridgeline
to the north, and Chang’s ship gets pounded. The Disc harassing
Thomas gets blindsided by a hail of chain fire, and blows in midair
before it can kamikaze anyone.

“
What
…” Tru gasps. I turn MAI’s eyes to the
ridgeline.

I see armor and red cloaks—bulky shapes hunkered down
in the rocks, adding their guns to ours.

“Nomads?” Kastl wants to know.

I try to get a better look. It isn’t Abbas sending
reinforcements. I see what looks like a lot of heavy plate welded
onto partial H-A and LA gear, even though their cloaks look like
Nomad Mars camo. They carry UNMAC guns: ICWs, heavy chain guns,
snipers, launchers. But I also see swords, spears, crossbows.

“UNMAC Base,” I hear a scratchy call on our Ops
channel. “We’re here to help.”

“Can we call out?” I ask Kastl.

“Not yet. Only local boosted Link, the gear we
retuned before we launched. No one else can hear us. Whatever’s
jamming us must be in that last ship.”

“We understand you are being jammed,” the voice comes
back. “If you don’t shoot at us, I’ll assume we’re welcome.”

The newcomers turn and concentrate fire on the light
fighters. This gives Rios and Thomas enough breathing room to get
back in the fight. Four of the flyers get shot apart. Another limps
off missing a wing—it tips and uses its remaining wing overhead
like a paraglider.

Chang sends his big ship after our mysterious
rescuers, his guns hammering the ridge. Our ground fire isn’t
hurting him. And Acaveda grimly lets us know she’s out of
bullets.

But once Chang gets his ship in close over the
newcomers, his hull gets slammed by big charges—they were trying to
draw him in close. They manage to cripple one of his big props, but
jets seem to compensate in keeping the cross ship airborne. And
Chang isn’t running out of bullets. He cuts into the newcomers’
positions.

“Incoming!” Metzger announces urgently. “Two
contacts. Bearing…”

Missiles arc over the base from the south and slam
Chang’s ship. MAI zooms in on two incoming ASVs.

“Melas Two, this is Melas Three Flight,” I hear Jen
Samuels on the Link. “Looks like you could use some help. Hope the
quiet doesn’t mean we’re too late to this party…”

Chang turns at the incoming aircraft. Another missile
slams the nose of his ship, and a second blows his port rotor clean
off. The ship staggers, but stays up. The incoming ASVs split,
making him choose which to pursue. Samuels’ gunner takes a few
opportunistic shots at the dwindling swarm of fighters. One of the
little flyers either sacrifices itself or gets in the way, and the
ASV’s wing shears off its tail assembly. This also takes out
whatever small engine it had, so it tumbles out of the sky. The ASV
is not too much the worse for the collision.

“Samuels to Colonel Ava,” I can hear her report.
“I’ve engaged one unknown bogie. It’s big, but it looks like we
made it hurt. There are also a handful of little flapping-bird
pocket fighters darting around. Bunkers look intact. Batteries are
all down. Troops are on the ground, exchanging fire with the
unknowns. I can see one ASV in the air, but she’s not firing—I
think she’s empty. Still no contact on Link. There’s a
lot
of wreckage outside the perimeter—can’t tell what’s what.”

Whatever reply she gets is lost in static. The ASVs
must have just slipped inside whatever jamming field Chang has
dropped on us. Samuels figures it out and slides her ship in close
over the Command Tower.

“Melas Two, this is Samuels. Can anybody hear
me?”

“Loud and clear, Lieutenant,” I call out.

“Good to hear your voice, sir,” she confirms. “I
assume we shot at the right target?”

“Affirmative. Remaining targets include those pocket
fighters. We’ve got friendlies on the north ridge. Be alert for
additional Discs.”

“
Discs
, sir?” she almost spits it out.

“The big ship you just shot at is their mom,” I tell
her, “or claims to be. Take it down, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir!”

Chang is already trying to get back on the offensive.
His big fans have failed, but his ship is still up, either on jets
or something else. The port wing is almost hanging off. The tail
section is on fire and raining scrap. There’s another fire in the
midsection. But he lets us know he still has guns. He turns his
ship for Samuels. She dances on her jets to make a slippery target,
but takes hits in her forward engines. I can see her nose dip as
she starts to lose thrust. Her guns hit him back, but they just
seem to chew metal. I think I see one of Chang’s turrets pop—it
doesn’t fire anymore after that. She sends her remaining missiles
into what looks like the cockpit or bridge of the thing. Her
wingman comes in and slams it from the flank, aiming for the aft
section, hoping to take out engines or fuel tanks. But it’s like
blowing holes in a derelict—it makes a mess, but doesn’t seem to
hurt anything critical.

“Pull back, Lieutenant,” I order. “See if it still
has the juice to chase you.”

She turns tail and runs, her wingman paralleling her
as she cuts westward. Chang’s ship limps, but starts moving after
her.

Acaveda takes a hint from Samuels and burns into the
remaining light fighters, playing a game of aerial “chicken.” She
manages to slam another one out of the air.

Chang focuses his guns on Samuels, tearing up her
tail section. She starts to flame out.

“Acaveda to Command. I’m no good out here, but I just
got my best boneheaded idea ever…”

MAI flashes alarms a few seconds later as her ASV
reads sudden fuel drains from her forward tanks. Then the
atmosphere in her cargo module goes all wrong. Fuel lines to the
module that feed backup lifters read as cut. The container is
flooding with Hydrox mix.

“You have got to be kidding me…” I hear Metzger
mutter. Acaveda turns and climbs, then dives down at Chang’s ship.
He doesn’t fire on her—he may not have anything that can shoot at
such a steep angle.

“Hope this works,” I hear Acaveda say to no one in
particular. Then: “Merry Christmas, motherfucker!”

She pulls up when she’s less than fifty meters from
his hull, and cuts loose the cargo module. She’s turned it into a
massive fuel tank. It slams down onto the back of Chang’s ship and
blows. The fireball wipes away whatever “crew” he had left on deck,
and added to the mass of the module hitting him, makes the keel of
his ship bow. Then it starts to come apart. The tail section breaks
away, leaving only what’s left of the wings and the boat-like main
section. He spins in, but doesn’t hit.

“Tough son-of-a-bitch,” Samuels assesses grimly,
coming around to try to finish the job with her own engines
failing. Acaveda is burning away, nothing left to do but get out of
there.

“Acaveda, do you have enough fuel left to make Melas
Three?” I ask. MAI tells me otherwise before she can answer.

“No, sir. I can stay up for another few minutes, less
if I burn hard.”

“Try to get outside whatever jamming field we’re
under. Let Colonel Ava know what’s happening. Then call out on the
ETE channel. Go.”

She turns tail and heads south.

Alarms tell me Samuels is going down.

“Get some distance, Lieutenant,” I order. “Get the
ridge between you and that thing. And don’t land on anybody.”

“Yes, sir.” She takes my hint and turns north, tries
to get past the ridgeline. Chang’s wreck keeps stubbornly after
her, but is barely able to keep pace with the crippled ASV. Her
wingman keeps plinking the shredded hull with his guns, and gets
only intermittent fire in reply.

“Melas Three Flight, disengage…” I tell him—the ID
says it’s Lieutenant McKay—wanting to try to save at least
one
ship out of this massacre. “Escort Captain Acaveda
clear—she’s going to need a ride home.”

Samuels is losing altitude, but manages to clear the
ridgeline. Chang is starting to close. I’m thinking my ploy is
going to fail—that maybe our mysterious new friends are out of
rockets. But what they are is disciplined. They let Chang get right
over top of them and start hitting him in the belly.

“UNMAC base,” I hear them again, still using our
operations channel, “the enemy’s lift is in the undercarriage. Can
you help concentrate fire?”

“On it, Colonel,” Thomas comes on. Her troopers have
dragged up fresh launchers and are huffing it over the top of the
bunkers to get a shot. More rockets fly and slam Chang. Big chunks
of his ship are falling away as it staggers in the air. There’s
less and less return fire coming down as our combined efforts
appear to be whittling down his guns. MAI tracks the remaining four
light fighters, who have turned and are fleeing northwest, toward
PK territory. But Chang himself still doesn’t look like he’s in the
mood to retreat.

Our new friends are taking what’s left of his fire.
MAI tries to give me visuals of the armored strangers as they
scatter for better cover. They move in alternating waves, one line
falling back and digging in to provide cover fire for their
fellows. Chang pushes his flaming wreck to keep on top of them, as
if hoping to use the burning debris that keeps dropping from his
disintegrating airship to bomb them. They fan out, giving Chang a
more difficult set of targets. They’ve effectively taken all fire
off of us, but they’re paying for it. I see armor suits go down
under Chang’s barrage. A lot more are lying across the ridge.

Thomas is about to send back inside for another
reload, and Rios is moving his remaining troopers in to join her.
MAI’s cold calculations count forty-one dead and seventy-four being
brought in with injuries. Tru’s people account for the worst of the
trauma because of the lack of armor.

Samuels has managed a rough set-down a thousand yards
over the ridgeline. Her cameras give me another perspective on the
battle. The newcomers are keeping up a valiant fight, and I can see
Chang lose another turret. He’s only got two working guns left, but
he’s using them. I watch him tag another one of our unnamed
rescuers, who goes down shooting back. Rios sends his remaining
rockets up.

This last round of penetrating charges lights up the
flank of Chang’s ship, and manages to kick it sideways into a list
that looks terminal. He manages to start dragging the ship up,
righting it, going back on the offensive. But then something bigger
slams him, something we don’t see coming—it looks like the ship has
been swatted by an invisible giant. The wings fold, twist. I can
see bodies fly from the wreck along with more flaming debris.

“Contacts incoming,” Metzger announces.
“West-northwest.”

On visual, I can see two ETE ships coming in fast.
They both go straight for Chang, and their ship-mounted “tools”
knock him around. Brutally. It isn’t more than a few seconds before
his ship flies apart and tumbles into the slopes of the north
ridge.

“Colonel Ram, this is Paul Stilson,” I hear a welcome
voice on the Link. “Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner. We launched
as soon as our sensors detected explosions in your proximity. Why
didn’t you call?”

“We’ve been jammed, probably projected by that ship
you just swatted,” I explain quickly. “Glad to see you. Next time
I’ll know to just blow something up.”

“Jamming is lifted, Colonel,” Kastl confirms.
“Colonel Ava is signaling.”

“Melas Two to Melas Three,” I call out.

“Can you give me a sitrep?” Lisa comes on urgently.
“What’s been happening?”

“Long story,” I tell her. “We’re still here, but
we’ve taken some bad hits. Thanks for the air support. It was very
timely. The ETE just sent help as well. I think we may have this
under control.”

“What did we just take down?” Paul interrupts. “It
didn’t look like a Zodangan ship. We saw the three you shot down on
the way in…”

“I need you to get in close to that wreck,” I tell
him urgently. “But carefully, Paul. There’s probably at least one
nano-hybrid, either in the ship or close by. He’s advanced, even by
your standards. He’s either pure nanotech or he can create some
impressive illusions.”

“What does he look like?” Paul asks the obvious.

“You’ll know him when you see him. He calls himself
Chang. He claims to be the master of the Discs, and brought some to
prove it. He also claims to be from the future.”

Paul doesn’t reply—I can only imagine how he took the
bizarre intel. The ETE ships settle silently, putting the flaming
wreckage in a crossfire. Blue sealsuits emerge from one ship, green
suits from the other. They use their tools to hover a few feet off
the ground and glide smoothly in closer to the wreck, fanning out
to encircle it.

“We’ve got a lot of wounded out there,” I shift
priorities. “Including our new friends. Rios, Thomas, can you link
up with them see how much assistance they’ll need?”

“On the way, Colonel,” Thomas confirms. I watch the
H-A suits start heading for the ridgeline. Samuels and her gunner
are coming in to help as well.

“Paul,” I call out, “I can’t be sure Chang is even in
there. He…”

“I see him,” Paul tells me, his voice like ice.
Thomas holds up and sends me video:

Chang’s silhouette steps out of the flaming husk of
his ship like he’s taking a walk in a garden. He’s none the worse
for wear, at least not that we can see. The ETE move in and
surround him, but keep a cautious distance. I see they all carry
the new Rod “gun” that Paul showed me.

“Colonel Ram,” I hear Chang’s voice on our channels,
“that was foolish.” He sounds only moderately annoyed. “I expected
you to be smarter. You have wasted not only lives but what little
weaponry you had left on only
one
of my ships. What will you
do when I come back with more?”

It’s Paul that answers him before I can. Even with
the helmet on, I can tell it’s him. The blue suit breaks ranks,
lands his boots on the ground and steps directly at Chang. Then he
points his weapon.