One Day on Mars

orchestrated and had completely crippled the U.S. Navy fleet and whittled it away to only three out of eighteen supercarriers remaining in any form of useful operation. The U.S. military might had been taken totally unaware and beaten to a pulp, a bloody messy pulp. General Ahmi had executed the battle nearly flawlessly, much more flawlessly than a simple terrorist could. This had been a brilliantly developed and executed plan with multiple waves and levels of attack ranging from global ground force movement, to electronic and cyber warfare, to air and space combat. It had been a brilliant command of an army that nobody even suspected to exist.

The plan was so well thought out that there were multiple failsafes. Even after the Marines had taken the WMD threat from the disabled falling ship, it was still a massive enough ship that it would cause tremendous damage to the city on the planet below if it crashed on a valid target. Its trajectory had been planned well. From the second that ship entered normal space from the hyperspace conduit, even while it was deploying its hundreds of fighters and mecha, even after its propulsion plant had been destroyed, and even after it had been defanged of its weapon of mass destruction, it was still a serious threat that took all the attention of the surviving fleet, which was still having to fight for its life against the surviving Separatist fleet ships. The death toll would be considerably more than the tens of millions if the entire Tharsis region had gone up in a supernuclear fireball, but still with just the crashing ship it would be pushing the millions.

'Well, sir,' squawked the net. 'If you would kindly run blocker for us, I was thinking about running one right up the gut just like we did back in the Army-Navy game our senior year,' Captain Sharon 'Fullback' Walker, a former aviator turned command crew said. Fullback had been her call sign because in her Navy Academy days she had played fullback for the Navy, which was not a position that many females played. It was especially not a position that many females played with the expertise and drive that Sharon had. Sharon was built more like a stack of bricks, a big stack of bricks, than a brick shithouse, and had a face that her mother might say was 'handsome.' On the other hand, she could have been a champion body builder but she was more ambitious and way smarter. And on top of that she could run a four-point-one-second forty-yard dash and do it over and over for four quarters while being hit hard by mean Army linebackers. She was definitely Navy fleet officer material. Captain Wallace Jefferson had played lineman a couple of the years that Sharon played and they had been teammates for a very long time. He was used to making holes for her to run through.

'Roger that, Sharon! I-formation through the two-hole on the snap!' The CO of the Sienna Madira didn't have time to reflect on the fact that he had just authorized his friend and teammate and fellow officer to carry out a suicide mission. Perhaps she had an escape plan. After all, Sharon was smart. But it didn't matter, because Sharon was a soldier and she would do her job whatever it took. It was fourth and one and they by God needed a first down.

Timmy, spread the word to the fleet to block for the Thatcher!

Aye sir!

 

'All fleet vessels, all fighters, all mecha, form blocking formation and protect the Margaret Thatcher and make sure that she makes it to the enemy kamikaze!'

'XO Burley,' Fullback called to her second officer. The Thatcher had been a good tough ship and she had enjoyed her command on board her for the last four years. But all good things must come to an end, she thought. Her ship had taken a beating and she was going to give it a sendoff that was honorable!

'Aye sir!'

'Are the troops away?' She scanned the crew manifest briefly in her mind but was more concerned with moving SIFs around to weak points in the hull and rerouting power as needed. Since the majority of the engineering crew had abandoned ship most of those functions were rerouted to the bridge. There were a few crewmen still aboard, those who couldn't see it in their hearts to leave the ship, and those brave stupid souls had stayed behind to work diligently at their tasks to keep the ship functioning as it was being torn apart around them by enemy fire and soon by one mother of a collision.

'All escape pods are launched, Captain.'

'Helmsman, you have conn discretion to give us the shortest path for a collision with that damned hauler!' Fullback ordered her young helmsman.

'Aye sir!'

'Burley, get me every ounce of structural integrity field you can get me on my forward hull!'

'Aye sir!' the XO replied.

'Helmsman Lee, get us moving at full-out balls-to-the-wall maximum acceleration!' the CO ordered.

'Aye sir! Helm at max accel,' the ship's pilot acknowledged.

'Time and trajectory to impact, navigator?' She turned her head and looked through her virtual sphere of the ship and the battle around it at the young lieutenant junior grade who had volunteered to stay at his post.

'Trajectory is plotted now, ma'am. Forty-two seconds to impact!' Lieutenant JG Joey Gugino replied.

'Understood.' Fullback nodded.

The Thatcher rocked hard to starboard, vibrated and shuddered harshly, and then damped out as the inertial dampening system compensated. At least it was still working, even though it did seem to be a bit sluggish and erratic. Warning klaxons would have blasted the bridge had the captain not had them turned off a long time prior. The helmsman managed to hold her balance but sprained her wrist doing so. The XO was flung forward into the front window and bumped his head against it so hard he was knocked unconscious or worse. The inertial dampening field clearly was no longer working uniformly within the bridge and the health status monitors showed that that was the case throughout the ship.

Her AIC informed her that the XO's AIC had alerted it that Burley's neck was broken but he was still breathing. It didn't matter. They were all going to be dead in a few tens of seconds anyway. She just wanted to take that damned Seppy hauler with them.

'Captain, we're taking heavy missile fire on aft sections,' the navigator said as he looked up from the CDC interface screens. The CDC had been evacuated and rerouted sensors to the bridge. The navigator was the CDC now.

'We won't be needing those sections in a few more seconds anyway,' Fullback replied. 'Helmsman, stay on course full acceleration!' She continued juggling power around the ship's SIFs, attitude control systems, and propulsion systems.