One Day on Mars

'What now?!' Rod asked, the panic in his voice never so obvious.

'Look up through the dome. Now, there is something you don't see every day,' Vince said. 'What the hell is that?'

Above them fell a bright glowing red fireball that showered and glittered with thousands of smaller fireballs spraying off of it and around it falling along behind in its path. Initially, Vincent thought it was a meteorite but it was moving too slowly and was way too big for that. A meteor that size and that shape would break up or destroy the planet. Something was holding it together. From the looks of it the giant fireball was the shape of a cross and had to be at least a kilometer or two wide and maybe twice as long. It was glowing brighter and brighter and looming closer and closer.

The goddamned Seppy bastards never even let up to look at the falling fireball. The HVAR rounds just kept zipping through the crowds of people as fast as they could fire and reload the things. Fortunately for the people trapped in the force fields, the Seppy rifles didn't hold the large magazines that American HVARs did and they were forced to reload more often.

'Maybe that thing'll fall on us and kill those sorry motherfuckers.' Vince said. 'Goddamn I wish I had a cigarette.'

Chapter 25

2:20 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

'Look at that, Daddy!' Deanna pointed up at the sky at the falling fireball while she sat comfortably in her father's lap. She was so tired of her e-suit and wanted out of it horribly bad, but at least she was with her daddy. Alexander was tired too and had to rest for a few moments. The work of finding wounded was slow and tedious. Moore decided to take a few minutes for himself and his family and then he would rejoin the AEMs and Joanie Hassed in their relief efforts. But to this point, they had found only two survivors and those two were so severely wounded they might not survive if they didn't get real medical attention soon.

'What the hell?' Flight Gunner Third Class Sammy Jo Tapscott was startled by the scene when she looked up from inflating the environment dome. 'Vulcan, you want me to check squawk?'

'My AIC is on it, gunner. You and Yo-yo and Pac just keep working on that shelter,' Lieutenant Junior Grade Seri 'Vulcan' Cobbs, Angel One of the search-and-rescue squad, replied. They couldn't evac to anywhere right now, so she decided to assemble a staging area with two inflatable environment chambers. 'Sounds like it's a Seppy rust bucket and the U.S.S. Margaret Thatcher,' she said.

I'm getting the same information, Senator. The link through BIL is working fine still.

Thanks, Abigail. Senator Moore looked over at the big metal beast that was sitting beside the two boxy-shaped SH-102 Starhawks near the edge of the Olympus Mons base escarpment.

Any idea when long-range coms will be back up? Even though they had managed to override the Seppy software spoof on sensors and local coms, the long-range jam had not been stopped yet. Long- range communications still depended on line-of-site, Internet, or QM router-to-router connections.

I think the battle is still taking precedent right now, Senator.

Just keep us posted.

Of course, sir.

'Well, it looks like it is going to come down right on top of the main dome. My God, all those people,' Reyez Jones said. He had put up tents before on overnight safaris across the inhospitable planet and was pretty useful in that regard. He was helping the SARs team with the staging area shelter. One dome was already inflated and the airseam in place. They needed to move the wounded into it soon.

'Tell me you're getting this, Calvin,' the MNN reporter Gail Fehrer asked her cameraman. For her and her cameraman this day had just been getting better and better. She had to get this footage on air as soon as she could. She could just smell Pulitzer.

'You're getting this, Calvin,' Calvin replied.

'Nobody likes a smartass, Calvin.' Gail punched his arm. 'Can you zoom in and get a better look at it? And let us see it.'

'Hold on.' Calvin had his AIC negotiate with the e-suit visors displays and then had the data QM wirelessed to them. 'Look on channel three.'

'All hands, this is the captain. If you are still with us, you have fought well and it has been my honor. Brace for impact! Shit . . . ' Squawked over the engine room 1MC intercom of the U.S.S. Margaret Thatcher where Engine Technician Command Master Chief Petty Officer William H. Edwards was feverishly rerouting coolant flow loops from all over the ship to keep the engines. Bill had actually been the chief of the boat for more than a year now and was the senior CMC on board the Thatcher, but when the CO gave the abandon ship order he knew that someone had to stay in the engine room and keep the ship flying to the last second. He wasn't about to let any of his junior enlisted men and women do that. After all, CMC Edwards had started the Navy in the engine room. Learning the ins and outs of the propulsion system of the supercarrier had been the only thing that kept him from committing suicide when his wife of twenty-one years had died of rejuvenation cancer, and it was fitting that since he started his career in an engine room that that is where he would end it instead of up on the bridge with the officers. He had always been uneasy up there anyway, though not because of the officers. The CO and the XO and the other command crew were the best, absolute best, but it was too damned clean up there. Bill liked the dirty hard work of keeping the boat running, and the orange heavy coveralls with grip pads in the knees and elbows and grimy smudges across his face fit him much more than the clean and pressed uniforms of the bridge crew. Down below was where he belonged.

CMC Edwards really did know the supercarrier engine room like the back of his hand. He had spent his first tour as a fireman's apprentice on the Mandela, a deployment as an HT2 on the Washington, and then there was that horrible time on land while he was in school, but at least he had been studying about the propellant drive system for the Navy supercarriers. He left the tech school as engine tech first class, ET1, and then went back to the supercarriers, where he stayed. He had done a stint on the Washington and for two weeks he had been a visitor on the Churchill, learning about some engine upgrades the newest boat in the fleet had implemented.