One Day on Mars

'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?'

Chapter 24

2:20 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

'What was that?' Rod heard a sound almost like an insect buzz overhead. Spitap, spitap, went the sound again. 'Did you hear that?' He turned to the pregnant lady, Carla, on the park bench beside him and then shrugged at Vincent.

'I heard something. I thought it was just my damn ears ringing from my nicotine withdrawals.' Vincent replied.