One Day on Mars

Jack saluted the flight-deck officer and brought the canopy down. The harness holding the fighter lowered and detached, dropping it the last twenty centimeters to the deck with a slight squish feel from the landing gear suspension. Jack followed the flight deck sequence and moved in line for takeoff.

'Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking,' Jack said over the fighter's internal speakers. 'Please make sure all trays are in their upright and locked position and all carry-on luggage is stowed away for takeoff. We'll be taxiing out to the catapult field and soon after will be flung into a hellacious shitstorm of anti-aircraft fire and enemy Gomers. Please sit back and enjoy the ride. If you intend to fly in the near future may we suggest you don't fly in the midst of a fucking war next time!' Jack laughed and looked in the rear view to see how his cargo liked his so clever and informative announcement. He couldn't be certain, but other than chewing on her bottom lip she looked as if she were taking a nap. Okay, humor wasn't the way to go, he thought.

Probably not, sir, Candis replied.

The fighter two in front of him was 'at bat' and eased into the catapult field and almost immediately disappeared out the open end of the bay. The one directly ahead 'on deck' began to follow suit. Jack was 'in the hole.'

'Fighter one-three-three call sign DeathRay, you are cleared for egress. Good hunting, Lieutenant Commander Boland!' the control tower officer radioed.

'Roger that, tower. Y'all just keep the beer cold and DeathRay will be back soon enough.' Jack eased into the 'on deck' spot as the fighter 'at bat' vanished in front of them.

'Here we go, ma'am. Y'all hang on,' Jack told his passenger.

'Roger that, Lieutenant Commander Boland. I'm hanging on.' Nancy swallowed hard and gripped her harness a little tighter until her knuckles turned pink and white.

'Fighter one-three-three you are at bat and go for cat! Good hunting, DeathRay!' the catapult field AI announced.

'Roger that. One-three-three has the cat! WHOOO! HOOOO!' Jack screamed, and was thrust hard into his seat.

The catapult field took about one thousandth of a second to grasp that there was a matter field inside it. That matter field, Jack's Ares fighter, was not there when the original magnetic and repulsor field lines were put in place, and the superconductor field coils would do just about anything to stay the way they had been originally. The end effect was that the catapult field did the only thing it could do. It expelled the little snub-nosed fighter craft out the aft end of the field at over three hundred kilometers per hour. Without the inertial dampening controls of the fighter the occupants of the craft would have been accelerated against their seats and restraints so harshly that they would have been turned to a bloody mush. From zero to three hundred kilometers per hour in one tenth of a second is considerable acceleration, indeed—eighty-five Earth gravities! Even with the inertial dampening controls the occupants of the fighter felt more than nine gravities for a few seconds.

'What a rush!' Jack shook his head and squeezed his thighs and abdominal muscles as tight as he could. He grunted as the overwhelming g-forces subsided and there was no longer anything to worry about but the sky full of anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighter planes. He forced the throttle full forward, pushing the fighter to over two thousand kilometers per hour. It took about seven seconds to reach top velocity while conducting evasive maneuvers, and again there were massive g-forces to deal with as well as a hellstorm of anti-aircraft cannon fire. His thigh harnesses squeezed tighter around his legs, forcing blood from them. He flexed his stomach muscles as hard as he could and yanked the fighter left as an anti-aircraft missile zipped past them to the right.

Candis! he screamed in his mind.

Got it, Jack! the AIC replied and almost as immediately the DEGs pulsed with a bright green flash of high-intensity light focused on the missile. The missile ablated and flew apart, pounding the Ares fighter with shrapnel at a delta velocity between missile and fighter of over seven hundred kilometers per hour. The shield microplating did its job as multiple spitwangs rang through the fighter.

Seppy Gomer, Jack! On our six at angels twelve!

'DeathRay! DeathRay, this is EvilDead . . . you've got a Gomer on your six, copy!'

'Unh! Got it, EvilDead!'

Jack pulled the fighter up and fired the pitch spindrive bringing the nose of the fighter one hundred and eighty degrees, flying backwards and upside down but still maintaining the fighter's current trajectory.

'Copy that . . . Gomer on six!' Jack grunted over the net. Holding down the railgun trigger, he tracked back across his pursuer's flight path with sudden death. The railgun bolts ripped through the blue-gray Separatist Gnat fighter, spinning it wildly out of control just before the g-forces tore it apart into a cloud of shrapnel.

Thirty-one, he thought

'Great shooting, DeathRay! Now get off your ass and get the fuck out of here! EvilDead out!' the CAG officer and number one pilot ordered him.

'Roger that, Lieutenant Commander,' Jack replied, and switched to the internal com. 'Hold on back there!' Jack yelled, and yawed the fighter to the left, firing at other targets of opportunity as Candis pointed them out in his mind's eye.

Nancy held on.

Chapter 2

7:10 AM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

'Approval ratings for President Alberts today are the highest in the history of the United States.' Walt Mortimer, one of the so-called expert panel members for The Round Table of News and lead White House columnist for the Washington Post, commented on the news of the latest polling data from the nation's capital. Mortimer had long been considered one of the 'graybeards' of reporters on Washington, D.C., and systemwide politics helping the populace. Actually, he was just another of the million Beltway Bandits making a living by feeding shit to the American public. But it was a good living.