One Day on Mars

fluorescent flash, leaving a hole the size of an e-suit helmet. On the other side of the building was where his sensors were predicting one of the Seppy drop tank's trajectories would end. Jackson's hope was to put such a shitstorm where that Seppy tank wanted to be that it would either get killed or fly away. Jackson preferred the former, but as long as it left him the fuck alone he didn't really give a rat's ass.

The noise of the Separatist drop mecha force had been drowned out momentarily by the collapsing buildings to the east and the cutting away of the building to the north by Jackson's HVAR. The smoke and debris from the battle, the crash of the Winston Churchill, and the collapsed buildings were heavy but the gaping hole in the dome about ten kilometers to the south of them was pulling the gas and debris clouds away because of the differential pressures. The debris swirled through the airflow channels between the city buildings and then out into the Martian atmosphere. War was not necessarily bad for terraforming but it sucked royal for whoever had been in that dome when the supercarrier hit. Second Lieutenant Washington didn't think too highly of war at the moment either. The city was a deathtrap with Seppy bastards scurrying everywhere like termites or angry bees.

'Jackson, that building is creating so much dust we can't see a damned thing. Nothing on IR either. Can you see anything from your vantage point?' Second Lieutenant Washington asked over the direct link he was keeping open with the sergeant. Once Captain Fasim bought it at the insertion point where the transport was shot down, the second lieutenant had assumed command. But he kept the link to the NCO open at all times in case Jackson had any 'advice.'

Unfortunately, Master Sergeant Sarah Nathan had bought it when the Captain did, so the squad's new NCO was an E5 and was almost as new as its lieutenant. The two of them had seen action, serious action, on Triton together, but they weren't the seasoned Marines that the captain and the master sergeant had been.

'No sir, I can't see a goddamned fucking iota. We are sitting goddamned ducks here, sir. If I were a Seppy bastard, I'd be coming in on the other side of that shit with guns blazing ready to cut us to fuckin' hamburger.' Jackson scanned the area again with all his passive systems afraid to go active as 'homers' might lock on to him. What a goddamned mess!

I agree, Sarge! Jackson's AIC, counterpart designation Corporal Susan Seven Seven Seven Niner Mike Bravo One, replied.

'I agree with the sergeant, sir,' Tammie, the second lieutenant's AIC voiced, over the net so both could hear. 'Still no word from CMTOC. Only the local QM coms are working. Nothing longer range than about sixty kilometers is working. I've daisy-chained a com patch through various local hubs to the Marines on the north side of the dome and one to an Army unit on the west side, but they are taking heavier losses than us. No word at all from the 34th.' Somehow the Seppies had managed to jam every communications system except for local quantum membrane (QM) transceivers. The smaller QMs were limited somewhat in range.

'Yeah, without any support or word from HQ we'll keep pushing on with the mission at hand. There is nothing more we can do for the VIP other than hope he makes it to the evac himself. So, we need to see if we can't slow down the Seppy advance through this city and somehow get to that evac point in time to get ourselves out and give the VIP some cover if he gets there. Ideas?' Washington asked.

'We need better cover sir,' the sergeant responded.

Yeah, and a fucking miracle, Washington thought. His AIC didn't respond.

Sergeant Jackson thought up a different display on his visor that showed his fellow 'misguided children' as blue dots on the overlay map of the city. An explosion dropped another building about two klicks north of him and two of the blue dots blinked out. Corporal Gomez and Private Sauro had bought it the hard way—death by falling skyscraper. Fuck! No doubt a black and blue dot also showed up back at the Casualty Management and Tactical Operations Center, or CMTOC (pronounced 'simtoc')—wherever the hell that was.

They were getting picked off little by little. What had started out as a rescue mission of twelve lightly armored troops was now down to Sergeant Jackson, Privates Packer and Kudaf, Corporal Shelly, and the second lieutenant —more than fifty percent casualties so far. But their mission changed from rescuing some fat-assed VIP to holding the city after they had been deployed. To start with, they were not equipped for the mission and they were way outnumbered. Then things went to hell in a handbasket once the squad started taking on heavy casualties. Surprise attacks were that way, but by God, the United States Marine Corps, aka Uncle Sam's Misguided Children, didn't train for whining about their situation. It trained Marines to make the best out of a really shitty situation and to kill as many of the rat-bastard enemy motherfuckers as possible before they kill you! Semper Fi!

'Shit! Two more down, sir!' Jackson reported the loss of the two troops. The sergeant's AIC began running an inventory list of available equipment from the remaining troops. At the same time, the lieutenant's AIC, Tammie, began recalculating battle plans and running force-on-force simulations. There were way too many red forces compared to blue for the AIC's taste and none of the simulations turned out . . . well.

'I saw it, Sarge. I'm tired of this sitting around and waiting shit. We can't hold this position and I'm with you. As soon as that dust plume gets to us we are done for. Our reinforcements may not ever be coming either. And the backup evac is still nearly four hours off.' The second lieutenant scanned through his maps of the southern borough again.

'What do you want to do, sir?'

'Those buildings are falling because the Seppies are there. Sergeant, I say we take some of this fuckin' mess to them for a change.'

'Oorah! Sir!' Jackson was tired of waiting too. Like any good Marine he didn't like sitting around with his thumbs up his ass and waiting to get smashed to hell and gone, especially over some fat-assed politician, which was the reason they had been deployed into this shitstorm in the first place.

'Goddamned Seppies are turning the south borough into a killing field of raining skyscrapers. I wonder just who the hell they are trying to kill?' the second lieutenant said matter-of-factly.

'Probably survivors of the Churchill, if there were any. Orders, sir?' the sergeant buzzed back over the net.

'Okay.' The lieutenant thought a few commands that brought the remaining members of the squad online and loaded a map on their displays. 'We are going to take cover in the smoke all the way out of the dome. Tammie is modeling and updating the fluid flow dynamics of this shit through the city. We follow the predicted flow path down these side streets.' Streets on the map started highlighting in green to show the path. 'If it changes she'll update the map. And we stay quiet and check fire until we are on top of the mecha. Once there we'll drop some shit on their Seppy asses and then run like hell out of the dome. Got it?'

'Oorah!' resounded from Jackson, Packer, Kufad, and Shelly.