Battleground Mars (17 page)

There was almost a panic in the canteen, men were running around and shouting for help. Fechter, for once, was working hard to control the panic.

“Men, listen. Go to emergency lockdown procedure. Dan Weathers is looking at it now, Damian Hacker is reviewing the security situation, and we’ll know what to do when they report back.”

They ignored him. For several minutes more crews were hunting in vain for ways to bring the electrics back on line. Eventually, Dan Weathers came in and shouted for them to listen. Fechter and Damian Hacker joined him.

“It’s like this,” the old engineer said in a voice pitched to reach all around the room. He was as aware as any of them of the dangers of uncontrolled panic. “Our first estimation was correct. The Taurons managed to destroy to our power generators. They managed to get a suicide team close to the power house and set off their charges.”

He was about to go on when Tobin Ryles snapped, “How long to fix it, Dan? We can’t last for long without it.”

“Fix it? We can’t fix it, because we don’t have the spare parts we’d need to make a repair. It’s kaput.”

“Damn.” Jacques Fechter swore as he looked wildly around the room as if for inspiration. “You know what this means? All our plans are on hold, we can’t attack, and we can’t continue the drilling. We’ll just have to sit and wait it out.”

There was a collective groan in the room, but Dan stopped them by holding up a hand.

“No, that’s not the situation, Jacques. It’s a lot worse than that.”

“What aren’t you telling us, Dan?”

“I hadn’t finished. What I’m trying to say is that all that work we did on the air scrubbers was in vain. They need power to operate. Now that we’ve lost it, we can write them off. Not only that, we used up all of our reserve portable units.

“So what do we do?” Fechter asked. His voice had taken on a whining note. It sounded shaky and frightened.

“Nothing. There’s nothing we can do, Jacques. In about three weeks we’ll run out of air.”

The entire complex went silent as the considered the enormity of what he’d told them. In effect, it was a death sentence. The relief ship was delayed, so at best they had eight months to wait. Yet all they had was air for three weeks. A driller ran up to Dan and made to attack him, two other men had to drag him off. The noise of panicked shouting started to rise again. Rahm stepped forward into the middle of the room.

“I’m going home!” he said in a voice that was loud enough to reach every corner of the room. “Those green eyed lizards aren’t stopping me and anyone that wants to come with me.”

“How? How are you going to do it?” Fechter shouted desperately. “There’s no way, we’ve…”

“Shut up, Jacques. Here’s what we do. We keep to plan, we go out and attack those bastards and put an end to them once and for all.”

“Now hang on,” Dan said. “I agree we shouldn’t let them get away with it, but it won’t help us.”

“Why not, Dan? We can seize their equipment and modify it for ourselves. Tell them, Gabi.”

She stood squarely and faced the tough miners, a tiny figure that looked almost absurd. What could she do about anything, she was just a kid? But when she spoke, her voice was confident and strong.

“It’s true. Their systems are similar to ours, so similar that we can adapt them for our own use. They’ve destroyed our life support system, so it’s only fair that we take what we need from them.”

They were doubtful at first, but she patiently explained to them the technical composition of the different air supplies and the modifications necessary to make them usable. By the time she’d finished speaking, they were clamoring to go out and do battle.

“Everyone, listen.” Rahm waited for quiet. “We need to organize this properly, if we do it right we’ll take them by surprise and finish them. The first problem we have is air. We only have a few portable scrubbers left. Until we can liberate some of the Tauron equipment, we’re going to be limited to about fifteen men on any one raid. So I suggest we start with guerrilla type operations and hit their drilling teams. Each time we’ll reclaim their breathing gear and bring it back for modification. And as we get the equipment converted, we can mount bigger and bigger raids.”

“What if they manage to beat your guerilla group?” Ryles said with a sneer. “That’ll mean you’ll have lost several portable air scrubbers for nothing. We’ll have even less here to maintain life.”

“So, you’d only have air for two weeks instead of three? Is that what you’re saying, you’d sooner die a lingering death than go out and fight like a man?”

Ryles flushed. “I’m trying to take a balanced view, that’s all.”

They ignored him once more and went to the garage to prepare. Ryles returned to his quarters, he had a lot of thinking to do. They’d humiliated him too much, it was time he found a way to repay them. They’d realize that he wasn’t a man to cross.

Rahm and Damian held a council of war in the garage while crews rushed around to prepare the buggies. They had a chart of the surface fixed to the wall. Both men looked at the current Tauron operation. Rahm put his finger on a point to the south west of Chryse Gulf. The Harmakis Valley.

“There. That’s where we can hit them first.”

“It’s a long trip,” Damian objected. “They could see us coming.”

“We’ve never traveled that way before, though. They won’t be expecting us. Could you estimate the number of miners they’ll have working here?”

Damian was thoughtful. “This chart is from one of our orbital overflights, of course. The infra-red returns suggest at least five, anything up to ten of them working at any one time.”

“That’s perfect. Why don’t we go straight out there and hit them before they even realize we’re on the warpath?”

The militia leader nodded. “Good, I agree. Let’s do it.”

“I’m coming with you.”

They looked around. Gabi Aaronsen stood there, a smidgeon over five feet, she reminded Rahm of a pocket Amazon.”

“Gabi, this is going to be a nasty, fight with plenty of blood and death. We’re going in fast and hard. We could easily take casualties.”

“You’re also desperately short of air. Who else can jerry-rig the Taurons masks for us to use on the journey back?”

“You can do that?” Damian asked.

Rahm smiled. He knew when he’d lost.

They travelled across the south of the planetary surface, eight of them packed into one buggy. Their capacity to recharge the power packs was severely diminished and it was decided that to use two vehicles would be too much of a drain on resources. Damian drove, Rahm was next to him in the front with Gabi. Behind him were Saul Packer and Kaz Yasan, his two best fighters. There were two of Damian’s militiamen squeezed in next to them, with Brad Haakon manning the laser cannon. They were all heavily armed with sidearms and laser rifles. Rahm reflected that out of all of them, these were the best men available. If they couldn’t do the job, no one could. Each of them had one of the precious portable air scrubbers. They needed to know they had enough air to get there and back if they were going to have the confidence to go into the fight and expect to win. In short, they had the best that the depleted resources of Mars Base could offer. The buggy plunged south, through the Aonia Desert, crossed the Sirenia Desert and skirted the Cimerian Desert. The only landmark of any note was the Kepler Crater, other than that the landscape was flat and empty. Just an endless, rolling series of deserts. They left the area of the Kepler Crater and begun to see the landscape change. They were coming up on Harmakis Valley. Each man was plagued with the thought that if they failed, they’d shorten their comrade’s lifetimes by several days. Even though they might die anyway, it was an awesome responsibility. Not one that any of them cared to saddle on their way to do battle with the enemy.

“Target in sight,” Brad called down from his elevated gun position.

Rahm scrambled up to the top of the buggy frame to check. He had to use his imaging scanner, but he was able to make out a typical Tauron drilling operation. He switched to infra red, and counted eight heat sources. Eight monsters for them to deal with. He’d have preferred it to have been less, but they’d have to cope. They had to win.

“We’ll need to go in on foot,” Rahm said, almost to himself.

“It’s one possibility, but they’re a long way away. I’d estimate two miles. We could drive straight at them, top speed, hit them while they’re still gathering their wits and take them out as we go past.”

“You mean like a drive-by shooting?” Gabi asked.

The men exchanged smiles. “Something like that,” Damian replied. “But I think we’ll use a little more finesse than your average street gangster.”

“Let’s do it, straight in and tear them to pieces.” They looked at the diminutive technician.

“You’re after some Tauron blood, eh?” Damian mused.

“As long as it isn’t Tauron air supplies, yes, I am. Just make sure you all aim low and don’t damage their breathing sets.

They checked their weapons. “All set, Brad?” Rahm called to their gunner.

“Just say the word, boss. I’m ready to fry those green bastards.”

“Hit it, Damian.”

He hit the accelerator and the buggy surged forward. They held on tightly as it bumped across the rocky terrain. For the first mile they felt it unlikely that they’d be seen. Buggy engines were electric and the thin Martian atmosphere made the passage of sound difficult. The most likely giveaway would be the unexpected movement. When they were halfway, Rahm spotted a shallow ravine that led to almost to the drilling site. He pointed it out to Damian and the militia chief pointed the buggy’s nose over and into the shallow channel. The base of the ravine was pocked and pitted with holes, between them were large rocks, large enough to tip them over or smash their underside. Damian fought the wheel while they hung on to stop themselves being pitched out onto the rocky ravine floor. He stopped once and got out to make a visual sighting, then climbed back in.

“I used the targeting indicator to check their distance. They’re exactly three hundred and forty two yards ahead of us. Two hundred and ten yards further there’s a ramp that leads out of the ravine and onto the plain where they’ve got their rig. We go up there and charge in, all guns blazing.”

“Aim low” Gabi reminded them

“Yeah, aim low, that’s right. Let’s go.”

He jammed his foot on the pedal and they surged forward again, almost at once they were swerving up and over the lip of the ravine and on the surface, dead ahead, lay the Martian drilling rig. Damian heads straight for them, only veering away at the last instant to give his people a chance at an uninterrupted field of fire.

The Taurons were sitting ducks. Tough, clever, sitting ducks but they were unable to respond. The buggy shot past them, all guns blazing. Brad used the heavy cannon to devastating effect. The laser rifles prevented any of the Taurons from physically jumping at the hurtling vehicle while the cannon shredded armored, scaly flesh and bone. Green blood poured out onto the Martian surface, Damian swung around for another pass but he stopped as they drew alongside the drillhead. Five of the monsters were dead, and three were writhing in agony from the heavy fire they’d sustained. They walked around with their rifles and finished them off at point blank range. Gabi stripped off their breathing masks and put them carefully in the buggy. There were five serviceable ones and three that had sustained damage, but she hoped to be able to cannibalize them to make one more useful set. Rahm noticed her shudder as she worked to remove the breathing sets. It was not pleasant work, as the Taurons were gruesome enough in life. In death, shattered by continuous heavy laser bursts that split their bodies apart, they were ghastly. But she made no protest and finished her task.

“Is there any of their other equipment we could use?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. We have more than enough drilling equipment, it's not that. The problems we’re facing are insufficient air and power.”

She stopped and thought for a moment. “Of course, they use power. I wonder if it bears any similarity to ours.”

She walked over to their transport. The vehicle was similar to their Martian buggies, but much larger. It was also armored, so that it could be used as a troop carrier as well as a vehicle to transport miners and the ore the wrested from the depths. A cable led from an allow casing inside the vehicle to the drillhead.

“This is it, it powers the drill. It’s some kind of a generator, I suggest we take it back to us and examine it. We could find a way to adapt their technology to ours. It’s not likely, but if we did, we could get the power back on at Mars Base.”

Saul Packer looked inside the transport and laughed. “Gabi, this thing’ll weigh a ton. We’re already overloaded. We can’t take that back too.”

“So why not take the transporter back with us too? They haven’t got any more use for it.”

She indicated the wrecked bodies on the ground. The men looked at each other. Their expressions were more than sheepish, they were plain embarrassed.

“Well, yeah, of course. That’d be a good idea,” Saul said. “I’ll work out the controls and drive it back.”

Before we go, we need to do something,” Rahm said. “I brought along some thermite explosive. I want to destroy this lot, bodies, drilling rig, everything.”