One Day on Mars

Concentrated fire from starboard, sir, Uncle Timmy alerted the captain.

'Sir, this is the CDC. We're taking a serious pounding on the starboard side lower decks. We've got a Seppy rust bucket rushing us head on! And it looks like they've figured out who's in charge because several ships are starting to concentrate on us.' The report came from the Combat Direction Center two decks below.

'Ensign Marks, half speed to new coordinates: R equals three kilometers, theta equals one eight zero degrees, and phi equals zero degrees. And give us ninety degrees yaw!' the CO ordered the helmsman.

'Aye sir!'

'Casualty reports don't look like we can't see the bad guys, sir!' the commander of the air wing added.

'I agree with the Air Boss, CO. I'm not seeing that.' Colonel Chekov agreed but continued to view the battle outside the viewport just in case things started to change.

'Bridge. CDC.'

'Go, CDC,' the XO replied.

'We've got three hyperspace conduit signatures about fifteen kilometers in plane off the port bow! Sensors show no new target signatures!' the officer of the CDC said.

'Senior Chief Vanu?' Captain Jefferson looked to his quartermaster of the watch.

'Aye sir! I've got eyeball reports of three cargo haulers dropping into normal space off the port bow coming in now, sir. Eyeballs show hundreds of mecha pouring out of them, sir.' QMSC Vanu wiped sweat from his forehead and tapped some keys at his console to double checke his reports.

'Yep, just like the Desert Campaigns.' The COB nodded and took another sip of his coffee.

Uncle Timmy, 1MC and all channels to the fleet and transfer the coordinates of the enemy ships to the fleet.

Aye sir! the flagship's AIC replied.

'All hands, all ships, this is Captain Jefferson of the Sienna Madira. We have three large enemy ships at the coordinates being transferred now. These ships are somehow jammed from our sensors and invisible. Lookout reports show hundreds of mecha being deployed from these vessels. Pilots be aware that sensors are not detecting these enemy craft. I repeat, eyeball detection is the only way to see these fighters for now. Good luck. That is all.'

'Our fighters are sitting ducks out there!' the XO said.

'Larry, get the second wave off the deck!' the CO ordered.

'Dawgs! We've got serious problems here. Keep eyes out for Gomers not on the DTM or the screens,' Lieutenant Chavez ordered his Ares fighter squadron. 'Let's pull in tighter and force our way into the middle of as many of the Seppy Gomers as we can following the coordinates being sent now!' Chavez had hoped that staying in close to as many of the Seppy bastards as they could would limit the targeting from the ones that their sensors were blind to.

'Rabies! JavaBean. I've got visual on at least two full squads three clicks out on a vector for the Madira! Sensor show nothing there.' Ensign Cory 'JavaBean' Davis, Rabies' wingman, alerted the Demon Dawgs over the tac-net.

'Roger that, JavaBean! I see 'em too. Holy shit!' Lieutenant Junior Grade Wendy 'Poser' Hill replied. Poser had been an Ares pilot with the Dawgs for more than a year and had seen her share of combat, so her call sign often was a bit of a misnomer. Wendy was known as Poser because she had 'posed' in an issue of a particular men's magazine entitled 'Women of the Military.' Originally it had been a bad thing and had almost caused her to lose her commission. But a marketing guru at the Navy recruiting office got wind of it and spun it around into a positive aspect for the service. What young man wouldn't want to be stationed on board a supercarrier with a hot chick who flies fighter planes? It turned out that she had just been in a bikini anyway and the shot was a candid. The name Poser had stuck with her though. Wendy didn't care as long as she got to fly.

'Poser, I got 'em. You and BreakNeck pull in tight on JavaBean and let's see if we can't pull some of these guys in to the starboard flight deck to meet some of our friends for a good old-fashioned knife fight,' Rabies ordered. By now Bigguns should have the Utopian Saviors deployed across the starboard exterior flight deck. In their Marine FM-12 strike mecha in bot-mode they would be able to target their main DEGs with eyeball tracking and hip shooting.

'Roger that, Rabies.'

'Boss, port off your three-nine line! Two Gomers. Shit!' JavaBean worked the HOTAS, turning his fighter ninety degrees to the left and pitched at thirty while not changing his trajectory vector. 'Guns, guns, guns!' he shouted. He went to his DEG, which sprayed blue-green bolts of energy just above Rabies' cockpit, hitting home on one of the incoming Seppy Stinger fighter planes.

'Shit! Break right, JavaBean!' Rabies banked left and rolled his fighter as he did in order to get an eyeball shot at the incoming. 'Argh shit!' He grunted as his pressure suit squeezed his body to help him compensate for the g- loading on it.

'We're blind as fuckin' bats out here!' BreakNeck said. 'Fox three!'

'We've got fire from the ground and we are flying blind as fuckin' bats!' Jack turned his fighter nose-over and watched as the ground came up at him rapidly. 'Gods of War go for the deck and stay beneath the SAMs' active trackers. Fish, stay on me girl! Goddamnit! Fuck!' Jack cried out as his hull plating was rattled with anti-aircraft rounds. The SIFs and the armor took a beating but he continued to force his fighter at maximum dive velocity for the deck.

Candis say when!

Hold it . . . hold it! Candis screamed in his mind as she calculated the no-return point of the dive. The objective was to pull out just microseconds before it was too late. The g-forces would suck, but it would put him rapidly through the AA fire and on top of the Seppy bastards that were shooting at him. If he survived the maneuver then he would unleash hell on them.

'Candis!' he yelled out loud. He chewed down on his TMJ bite block and took rapid shallow breaths. The pressure system around his torso tightened hard and the bladders on his legs filled with air, squeezing his legs so tight they felt like they were being cut in two pieces.

Now, DeathRay! Now! Now! Now!