One Day on Mars

2:21 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

"Rabies, Rabies! Got a Seppy bot motherfucker sneakin' across the bridge hull—got it?" BreakNeck alerted his boss. Rabies was closest to that part of the Thatcher and he could get there quickest. "Guns, guns, guns." BreakNeck trailed off after a Seppy Gnat that just passed him head-to-head at several hundred kilometers per hour relative.

"Roger that, BreakNeck! Mmmfff!" Rabies pulled back on the HOTAS into a full reversal of his acceleration path and rolled over, going full throttle into a dive at the bridge of the supercarrier.

"Warning maximum g-loading. Warning pilot blackout probable," the "Bitching Betty" sounded in Rabies' cockpit.

"No . . . fucking . . . kidding!" he screamed, and squeezed his abs and bit the hell out of his TMJ mouthpiece. Pure oxygen flushed his face, helping keep him alert. Rabies shook his head and normalized his flight path to something more humanly tolerable.

It would have been a damned sight more tolerable a flight path if it weren't for all the enemy fire and debris and shit in his way. Debris was venting upward explosively from every bulkhead and deck vent of the once pristine supercarrier, and it looked like hell hung over, nicotine deprived, and on a bad hair day to boot at the moment.

"Shit Rabies, on your six too! Mooove Rabies! Move!" BreakNeck shouted as he took on fire himself. "Goddamnit, Fox three!"

"Got it! Guns, guns, guns!" Rabies went to guns to track in on the Stinger pounding across the bridge of the ship and yawed hard left one hundred and eighty degrees to get a firing solution on the Gnat that was taking station on his six. "Uhg. Fox three!" he yelled, and probably would have vomited if he hadn't already puked up everything in his stomach during the deathblossom moments before. The mecha-to-mecha missile burned from beneath the wing of the snub-nosed fighter on a short and abrupt path through the tail of the Seppy fighter plane. The purple ion trail the missile left behind tracked right up to the orange-white exploding fireball that was once an enemy fighter plane.

Pull out, Rabies! His AIC warned him as the deck of the supercarrier rushed up at him.

He cursed and yawed and rolled the fighter back to normal nose-forward into the dive and then yanked back on the HOTAS with his left hand and pushed left and forward with his right hand as he passed through the expanding fireball of the exploding Stinger mecha. Debris and plasma whirled and clanged against the fighter and a large chunk of the exploding mecha's empennage slammed into the nose of the fighter, pounding the armor plating loose at the laser-weld joints. He passed by the bridge windows so closely that he could see the faces of the crew inside and could have sworn he saw one of them hit the deck. As the supercarrier rushed by underneath his cockpit he pulled the ship up and away from it.

"Warning, enemy radar lock on! Warning, structural integrity at minimum safe levels! Warning enemy missile launched."

"Goddamnit! Guns, guns, guns!" Rabies went to guns to track the incoming missile but there was no time and flying though that fireball did major damage to his plane. It was reacting sluggishly to his control commands and the HOTAS was erratic.

"Warning impact imminent!"

Eject Rabies! Eject!

"Eject, eject, eject!" he screamed, and pulled the red lever and was flung hard away from the ship almost immediately. The Seppy missile impacted the fighter less than a second later. The debris from the explosion slammed hard against his ejection seat, sending him spinning and careening uncontrollably through space into a hornet's nest of friendly and enemy mecha, cannon fire, DEG bolts, and exploding debris fields all around him. A shitstorm of bad news zinged past him in every direction at hundreds of kilometers per hour or more.

"Oh, fuck!" Rabies yelled at the top of his lungs as a hot slag of debris whipped through his right arm taking it off just below the elbow. A tiny spurt of red blood had time to escape before his e-suit resealed itself. But Rabies never saw it, because he was spinning wildly out of control. The ejection seat dampening thrusters tried to compensate, but the spin was too much angular momentum for the thrusters to overcome. The impact of the debris made the wild random spin of his ejection seat even worse than it had been before and Rabies' day just kept getting worse.

A problem with debris fields in space is that if there is one piece of debris there are probably more—lots more. Almost as soon as the searing pain from his severed arm registered in his mind more debris cut through his body, ripping gashes in his abdomen and back and severing his left leg almost at the hip, and several smaller-millimeter diameter pieces passed through him like HVAR rounds. The last thing Lieutenant Armando "Rabies" Chavez heard was his own terrified bloodcurdling screams as one of the pieces of the exploded debris slammed through his helmet faceplate, killing him instantly as it passed out the back side of his head.

"All hands, this is the captain. If you are still with us, you have fought well and it has been my honor. Brace for impact! Shit . . . " The CO of the Margaret Thatcher hit the deck reflexively as a Seppy Stinger exploded just outside the bridge window, splattering the armored transparent material with debris from the fireball. Just as the fireball began to dissipate, milliseconds later a Navy Ares fighter punched through it with its cannons firing full auto. The fireball formed a collapsing plasma ring from the effects of the fighter passing through it at high speeds. Almost as soon as the fighter pulled away from the ship it was hit by a Seppy missile and blown asunder into a streaming red plasma debris field. The pilot had been able to eject but was consumed by the fireball debris of his exploding ship almost immediately.

"Thanks and Godspeed, pilot," Fullback whispered under her breath.

The ship began to list hard to starboard again but this time not as violently. The captain watched the health monitors in her head. The entire rear port sections had been blown out. Atmosphere, fluids, and debris jetted from the destroyed section, pushing the supercarrier slightly off course and giving it a yaw.

"Helmsman, can you compensate the yaw?"

"Ma'am! We're crabbin' it in but they can't hit us hard enough to stop us now!"

"Good! Stay on it, Lee!" Fullback looked at the incoming missile tracks in her DTM virtual view and did some numbers in her head. The CO keyed the 1MC. "This is gonna be a rough ride! Everybody strap in for impact now!"

"Ma'am, we just lost propulsion!" the young ensign at the helm shouted.

"Just hang on, Ensign Lee!"

The Seppy hauler could no longer be seen from end to end as it rushed upward toward the listing supercarrier at several hundred kilometers per hour. The window and the viewscreens were filled with the collision view as the nose of the supercarrier dug into the hull plating of the enemy hauler. The nose of the hauler gave way to the momentum of the supercarrier forward decks and the impact flung the entire crew of the ship against their restraints so hard that the navigator was killed instantly from the impact of his brain slamming against the inside of his own skull. The inertial dampening field caught up a microsecond too late for him.

But for the captain and Helmsman Lee it might have saved their lives. The force of the impact was muted by the dampening field just quick enough that Helmsman Lee's left arm was crushed against her console and both clavicles were snapped through and through. Splinters of her right clavicle pierced the top of her lungs. The swishing of her internal organs against her restraints ruptured her spleen and bruised her kidneys and bladder.

"Oh God!" Helmsman Lee screamed in agony and fear until the navigator's console tore loose and slammed into the side of her head, knocking her unconscious for the moment.

"Get some!" Fullback held on, screaming a guttural battle cry at the top of her lungs as several of her bulging muscles ruptured from the strain. Her left leg was broken from behind as a chair mooring tore from the deck and cut into her calf muscle, bruising it and snapping the bone. The bone forced through the front of her shin, causing bright red blood to squirt on the deck with each heartbeat. Fullback screamed in pain only briefly and pounded her right fist into the captain's chair madly to distract her from the pain and sheer terror.

Metal on metal screeching and breaking and clanging sounds vibrated and rang out through the ship at deafening levels. The inertial dampening field was keeping up but it was still a very rough ride as the supercarrier continued to tear forward into the giant Seppy hauler. It tore and grinded and screeched its way until the forward decks actually poked through to the other side, and then it stopped any forward motion and continued on the fall with the hauler. The angular precession of the hauler was brought almost to a stop by the added unbalanced mass but there was not enough momentum exchange to cause the now combined mass of the two ships to tumble.

Secondary explosions erupted in a rainbow of plasma colors and sparks across the decks and throughout both of the decimated behemoth ships as they approached the Martian atmosphere. Captain Walker looked out the window and could see hull debris and torn metal bunched up against and around the deck of the supercarrier where it impaled the Seppy hauler. There was also blood on the window in places from where the XO's body slammed into it on impact. Debris that had been thrown free of the ships were already glowing red and ablating due to reentry heat. And large shards of metal hull plating that hung loosely from the wreckage flailed and flopped wildly from the heating and aerodynamics of reentry and Fullback could see several very large chunks of hull from each ship peel away and fly off behind them.

The friction from reentry heated the armored windowscreens, but the structural integrity fields of the strong ship held. The bridge environment systems flushed the room with cold air to adjust for the rapid heating. Fullback gritted her teeth from the pain and tried to put it out of her mind. She had to make certain her mission had been accomplished and then see if there was a way to survive this mess.

Marley! Give me all the SIF power on the bridge that you can! If there are other rooms that have been plussed up don't rob them, there might be survivors in there. Can you check?

I'm checking it, Captain. Sensors are failing everywhere but I show forty-seven crewmen still on board in various locations.

What about our trajectory? Did we push the hauler out from over the city? Obviously, the goddamned thing didn't blow up.

Sorry, Captain, all external sensors are down. We do have QM comms.

You're our only hope now, Marley. Keep us alive if you can. We'll need extreme inertial dampening when we hit the ground!

I understand, ma'am.

Open a channel to the Madira.

Aye sir.

"CO Madira! CO Thatcher!"

"Holy shit, Fullback! You're still alive!" Captain Jefferson squawked back.

"Probably not for much longer, Captain. Propulsion is down and we're stuck to the Seppy rust bucket." Fullback grimaced at the pain in her leg. "Did it work? External sensors are down over here, Wally. Did we push the hauler out of the way?"

"Is there any way you can get out of there, Sharon?"

"Negative, Wally. All the escape pods are down and I probably couldn't make it to one anyway. Besides, I couldn't leave Helmsman Lee behind. Did we save the city, Wally?"