Semper Mars(111)

“Fuck, no!” she shouted, her voice sounding loud and hollow inside the confines of her helmet. She still remembered Captain Warhurst on the embassy roof, still had nightmares about him going down as her Peregrine lifted into the sky.

She wasn’t about to leave one of her people.

That frost inside his visor was a bad sign, though. As air expanded, it cooled. The air in Walsh’s helmet must be expanding fast as it leaked through the myriad crazes and cracks in his visor and into space. He had only seconds now….

She didn’t know if anyone was waiting for them on the other side of that hatch, and at the moment, she didn’t care. The hatch opened the old-fashioned way, with a locking wheel. She released Walsh long enough to throw herself against the wheel, bracing her feet on a deck grating for leverage. If there was pressure on the other side…

There wasn’t. The hatch swung open gently. Grabbing Walsh, who by this time was completely blinded by frost and might be close to blacking out, she shoved him through the open hatch and dove through after him.

The next chamber was a small airlock with four hatches, a kind of joiner module that connected three other modules to a fourth. With the hatch dogged down behind her, she turned about desperately, looking for a pressurization control, unable to find one—

She turned Walsh, intending to move him aside in the cramped quarters, and saw with horror that a piece of his visor the size of her hand had shattered, the pieces of tinted plastic and ice scattering in a glittering, tumbling cloud. His eyes stared at her, bugging from his face in terror, his mouth wide-open, the lips bright blue as he tried to draw breath. Too late! Too late!…

And then she realized that there was something strange. He was breathing. With difficulty, yes, but he was breathing, his mouth gasping like a fish on land as he gulped down lungfuls of air. Only then did her armor’s external mikes pick up the faint but growing hiss of air pouring in through a duct close by their heads. She hadn’t found the control; someone inside must have seen them coming in and triggered it for her.

Her suit’s visor advised her moments later that there was breathable atmosphere outside, standard temperature and pressure. With a creak and a bang, the hatchway opposite the one they’d come through swung open.

Fuentes still had her ATAR, attached to her suit by its lanyard, but she hesitated in bringing it up. She didn’t know at the moment whether it would be better to storm through firing or go ahead and surrender; the whole purpose of this exercise, after all, had been to get Gunny Walsh into atmosphere, and this she had done. It grated, though, to simply turn over her weapon and give up….

A young, tanned, blond, male face peered through the open hatch at her, just visible by the wan light of an emergency lantern. “Come on aboard, Marine,” the man said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

She wiggled through the narrow hatch. There were three men on the other side, one holding an automatic pistol. A fourth man floated in a corner, blood smeared across his face.

“I’m Colonel Gresham,” the man with the pistol said. “US Aerospace Force.”

“Colonel Gresham?”

“Commander of this station,” he said. “Welcome aboard…and I mean that, very sincerely!”

She unfastened her helmet. It was steamy hot inside the station, a testimony to the effectiveness of the Marine siege and the cutting of power. There were no lights on at all save for small emergency lights at key points. “What’s the tacsit?”

“Nearly all of them went out that way a few minutes ago,” Gresham replied. “There are only two or three UNers left aboard, I think.” He jerked a thumb at the body in the corner. “He was on guard here and was going to leave you in the lock, but we persuaded him otherwise.”

“Thanks,” she said. She was floating next to Walsh, checking his breathing. The gunnery sergeant was conscious, still breathing hard but able to nod at her when she touched his face. “For both of us.”

“It sounded like their attack was a last effort,” Gresham said. “I think they knew they weren’t going to get any help from Earth, and decided on a last do-or-die charge.”

“It almost worked,” she said. She pointed at a radio on the bulkhead. “You have power enough for that?”

“Sure do.”

“Okay. Use Channel 15. Talk to the Marines outside, and have them start coming in through here.”

“While you?…”

“Have a chat with the people at the other end of this thing.”

Gresham hefted the pistol he’d taken from the UN soldier. “I’ll come with you.”