Semper Mars(124)
Before long, though, he would either use the base computer logs to verify that no such research team existed…or he would decide he couldn’t take the chance and order his people to open fire.
It wouldn’t be much longer now, one way or the other.
TWENTY-FOUR
TUESDAY, 19 JUNE: 1706 HOURS GMT
Garroway
Cydonia One ground position
One kilometer south of Cydonia
Prime
Sol 5658: 1421 hours MMT
“Down!” Caswell cried, throwing herself facedown into the sand. “We’re taking fire!”
Garroway ducked instinctively, then rushed ahead, dropping to his belly behind the low ridge of hard-packed sand a few meters to Caswell’s right. He couldn’t hear shots, not in this thin air, but he could see dark shapes scurrying along another ridgeline a couple of hundred meters to the north. Beyond, just visible on the horizon, he could see the tops of several habs, the microwave tower, and the obelisk of the shuttle Ramblin’ Wreck standing on its apron. A blue UN flag hung listlessly from a pole.
Sand splashed from the crest of the ridge less than a meter away, and he slid farther back behind the dune’s protective rise. Several of the other Marines returned fire, but Jacob and the other noncoms yelled at them to drop.
Lieutenant King dropped to the ground next to him. “Here we go,” he said.
“Yeah,” Garroway replied. “Now we start praying for air support.”
1709 HOURS GMT
Cydonia Two aboard MSL
Harper’s Bizarre
30 meters above UN Positions
South of Cydonia Prime
1424 hours MMT
Knox took another look out the cargo hatch. They were less than one hundred feet up now, close enough to see individual blue-helmeted troops scurrying about on the ground or ducking for shelter behind the three Mars cats parked near the base’s main hab. He saw a flash as someone took a shot at them and something jarred the lobber’s hull…then again.
Fortunately, the lobber’s appearance had rattled the base defenders, and their fire was less than accurate. Some of the blue-helmets ran for cover. Others stood in the open, rifles dangling at their sides, as they stared up at the huge, four-legged apparition that was bearing down on them from this unexpected direction. The jet of plasma from the lobber’s engine was invisible, but the heat waves shimmering beneath warned of high temperatures and a possible radiation hazard. Some of the defending troops hesitated before firing, fearful perhaps that they would bring the thing down on top of them.
“Okay, Captain Elliott,” Knox said, leaning out from the cargo bay as far as he could so that he could see. “Let’s take that near Mars cat, the one with hull number 357.” There were five blue-helmeted troops huddled together in the shadow of the crawler.
“That’s number 357, rog,” Elliott replied. With a thump, the lobber changed course slightly, drifting toward the target. Knox reached down and picked up his end of the ice chest, and Ostrowsky, opposite, did the same. Carefully as the lobber bounced and jolted, he unsealed the pressure-tight lid with a sharp hiss and opened it. A simple latch arrangement kept the lid locked open, back and out of the way.
Inside, set in loosely packed array, were thirty cans of Stony Brook beer.
They were fifty feet above the Mars cat now and perhaps fifty feet to the side, drifting along, Knox estimated, at a man’s walking pace. “Ready?” he asked.
“Ready, Gunny,” Ostrowsky replied.
“And…three, and…two, and…one…”
With each number, they swung the chest out, then back, working up the rhythm and the momentum.
“…and…now!”
“Bombs away!” Ostrowsky yelled. They released the ice chest on the up-and-out swing, tossing it clear of the drifting lobber. Its lid latched open, it sailed through the air, turning end over end and scattering a cloud of small, metallic cylinders that glittered and flashed in the afternoon sun.
The cans fell, spinning, and long before the first one reached the ground, some of them had already exploded in a glorious, golden spray that sparkled as it fell….
1709 HOURS GMT
UN Positions
South of Cydonia Prime
1424 hours MMT
Lieutenant Jean-Michel Dutetre was aiming his FA-29 rifle at the splay-legged apparition backlit against the sky overhead when the case sailed out into the air, spilling its contents across the UN position. His first thought was that it was some kind of cluster bomb, a projectile designed to scatter a cloud of smaller bomblets, even though UN intelligence had reported that the US Marines on Mars possessed no such specialized munitions.
His thought was confirmed an instant later when some of the falling cylinders struck one another or simply exploded; a rain of gold liquid splattered down across the sand, the Mars cat, and the men crouched behind it. Each drop that touched the ground seemed to explode in a puff of white gas and ocher dust. At the same time, whole cylinders were hitting the ground with distinct, hollow-sounding pops, exploding and hurling streamers of liquid and white gas in every direction.