At the same moment, something higher up flashed into view and out of view at almost the same instant. Marten recognized it as a jet. He knew because of the afterburners that glowed orange long him for him know they were all about to die.
Omi leaned over and grabbed the controls.
“Move!” Marten roared.
The security men in the back leaned away from Marten. The man’s face behind the visor showed petrified shock.
Marten lifted the anti-air rocket launcher. It was a heavy weapon like an ancient bazooka. With a grunt, Marten hefted it onto his shoulder, flicked tracking with his thumb so the launcher beeped and a green light winked. He peered through the scope in time to see another jet fire a missile. That missile streaked like lethal death just as the first one had.
With a thud, Omi landed the skimmer. That violently jostled Marten and almost threw him out of the craft. Then the enemy missile slammed into the rock face with a shattering explosion. Marten heard rock shards whiz past his helmeted head.
High above, the SU jet’s afterburners engaged, and it flashed out of view.
With his teeth tightly clenched so his jaws hurt, Marten scanned the pink sky. The first jet had re-appeared. It must have made a wide circle. Yes. It was still turning. It was going to strike again.
“Bastard,” Marten whispered under his breath. He hefted the rocket-launcher onto his shoulder.
“Run for cover!” someone shouted into Marten’s headphones. He was vaguely aware that one of his men dove out of the skimmer. Didn’t the fool realize that if they lost the skimmer, he’d never make it anywhere alive in time before his suit ran out of power?
Beside him, Omi lifted another anti-air launcher. “The jet jocks should have fired a flock of missiles each and called it a day,” Omi said through his speakers.
The Korean’s coolness helped Marten’s tripping heart. Could the air jocks up there be as green as his men were? It seemed unlikely. But it did seem to Marten that it would have been smarter for the pilots to stay out farther and use their heavier missiles to advantage instead of coming in so close.
Marten tracked the first jet as it swung back around. The launcher beeped again, which meant it had gained radar-lock. Marten thanked God he held Highborn tech and not some imitation Martian crap. Marten held himself stiffly and pulled the oversized trigger. This wasn’t a gyroc weapon. The blast almost knocked him over backward. It was a Highborn weapon and was meant for a nine-foot giant in battleoid armor.
The rocket whooshed fast and climbed with astonishing speed. A second rocket whooshed. It was Omi firing.
The pilots must have recognized their danger. Without firing another missile, the first jet nosed up and the afterburners roared orange flames and made a thunderous sound. Anti-radar chaff drifted from the jet in a silvery clump behind the steeply climbing craft. Neither the chaff nor the steep climb helped. The anti-air missile hit the jet squarely and exploded with an impressive display of pyrotechnics. Omi’s missile did the same thing with the second jet.
Marten heard himself wheezing, the noise loud in his helmeted ears. He scanned the Martian sky as he trembled. If there were another jet, it would likely kill them all. Slowly, it dawned on him that the two aircraft were it. No more appeared.
Omi put his hand on Marten’s shoulder. Marten whirled around with a snarl. Then he grinned sheepishly and nodded as he settled down.
“Major Diaz?” Marten asked over the radio. There was nothing but static. Were his troubles with Diaz over? Was the man dead? “Major!” he shouted.
“Here,” Diaz answered in a choked voice.
“Glad to still have you among the living, Major,” Marten said. “Rojas.”
“Here, sir,” Rojas said.
Gutierrez was also alive, with his entire skimmer crew. Squad leaders Lopez and Barajas were dead and their skimmers destroyed. There were no survivors from either vehicle.
Thirteen skimmers were left out of the original twenty. They had destroyed two more jets, but at too high of a cost.
“Listen up, people,” Marten said over their headphones. “We’re going to use over-watch from now on.”
Marten waited for Diaz or one of the others to ask him why they hadn’t been using over-watch before this. But none of them did. Omi and he had killed the two jets and likely saved the remainder of the raiding party. Maybe it was finally starting to sink in with them that they weren’t soldiers and this was a real shooting war, not a guerrilla raid on underground city streets.
Too soon, their skimmer whined, and it shook so violently the metal rattled like a child’s toy. They rose higher and higher, using the VTOL jets to reach the next plateau.
Marten’s throat was dry like rust and tasted just as bad. He was sick of the planet’s sandy smell and the gigantically oversized geographical formations. He wanted to get back to the Mayflower and head for Jupiter. Jets, sand, kilometers deep canyons, he yearned for the quiet of outer space.
What a way to buy fuel. He snarled as the VTOL jets whined down and they flew over the ground by a normal few feet. If Social Unity had done something to his hard-won shuttle… then he was going to find a way to make them pay in a manner that they would never forget.
-20-
As Marten and the remnants of his commando team skimmed for Olympus Mons, the SU Battlefleet already braked to match orbits with Phobos, Deimos and the edge of the Martian atmosphere.
Commodore Blackstone sat in his wardroom, staring at a still-shot of his ex-wife. The vidscreen showed a young woman with long auburn hair and in a three-piece bathing suit. Through bio-sculpture, she had maintained her youthful looks. Through vigorous exercise, she had maintained her shape. To realize now that she hadn’t done it for him, but in order to keep catching new lovers drove Blackstone near despair.
There was a soft knock at his door.
Blackstone’s hand shot out as he pressed his keyboard, switching the screen to a tactical display of the Mars System.
“Enter,” he said.
The door opened and stout General Fromm stepped in and saluted.
“No need for that,” Blackstone said quietly. “We’re not on the bridge.”
General Fromm nodded stiffly and then managed an odd smile.
“Is there something troubling you?” Blackstone asked.
Fromm cocked his head, blinking at him. The general seemed distant as if he’d lost his train of thought.
“If you could make it brief, General,” Blackstone said. “I’m rather busy.” He gestured at his vidscreen. “I’m planning the next maneuver.”
“Ah…” Fromm said. “Yes. That’s why I’m here, sir.”
“Oh?”
“It’s about the prisoners on Phobos.”
“There are prisoners?” Blackstone asked. This was the first he’d heard about them.
“Strange, I know,” Fromm said. “The cyborgs are so rigorous that it would seem they’d kill everyone. Apparently, they are keen to digest every iota of intelligence they can from the enemy. Toll Seven wishes for my people to interrogate the prisoners.”
Blackstone frowned. Wasn’t that Commissar Kursk’s task? “It surprises me the cyborg doesn’t want to do it himself.”
“My thinking exactly,” Fromm said. He touched his neck and rubbed a heavy bandage there.
Blackstone was surprised he hadn’t noticed the bandage before now. It was flesh colored. He wanted Fromm out of here so he could decide whether to send his ex-wife a message regarding his possible return to Earth. Although Blackstone found it irksome, he forced himself to show interest in the general and his request.