The empty case struck the top of the Mars cat’s cab, bounced off, and landed on the sand a few meters away. Several UN troops went to their knees, scrabbling desperately at the liquid that clung to their helmet visors like hot-smoking glue.
One can struck Private Benz squarely on his blue helmet; the liquid splattered across his armor and Dutetre’s armor as well, and when it hit, it clung and smoked, steaming furiously like some kind of unimaginably powerful acid….
Dutetre dropped his rifle and began trying to brush the liquid off. It was boiling and freezing at the same time, the liquid bubbling furiously and giving off clouds of white smoke even as it congealed to a thick, icy frost that clung to whatever it touched. He couldn’t imagine what the stuff might be…but he was terrified that whatever it was must be eating its way through his armor.
“Chemical attack!” Dutetre screamed over the general command frequency. “Chemical attack!”
“It’s acid!” someone else yelled. “It’s eating my suit!”
“Help me! It’s all over my visor! I can’t see! I can’t see!”
1711 HOURS GMT
Cydonia Two aboard MSL
Harper’s Bizarre
30 meters above UN Positions
South of Cydonia Prime
1426 hours (MMT)
“…and two, and…one, and…now!”
Together, Knox and Ostrowsky hurled another case of Stony Brook from the shuttle’s cargo bay, nailing the third and final Mars cat, engulfing the vehicle in swirling steam.
They’d tested the idea back at Mars Prime before loading the beer aboard the lobbers for the voyage north. The beer cans were actually fairly stable in the Martian near vacuum, though they were under high pressure. The pressure increased rapidly as the beer cooled enough for the water content to start to freeze, expanding against the confines of the thin aluminum walls of the can.
All of this meant that any sharp, hard shock—such as striking another can in flight, or smashing into the ground or the cab of a Mars cat or the top of a blue-painted space helmet—guaranteed an explosive release of pent-up pressure, and the moment beer hit the Martian atmosphere, several things happened all at once. The carbon dioxide in suspension in the liquid came out of suspension very quickly, as foaming bubbles, and as gas that turned as visible and as white as smoke as it chilled. The liquid froze almost as soon as it touched the cold outer layers of armor or vehicle windscreen; everything it touched was swiftly coated by a thin scum of water ice and sublimating carbon dioxide.
And where the liquid touched the Martian ground, the effect was even more spectacular. Most of the surface regolith was so dry it made the sands of the Sahara Desert seem like wetlands in comparison. When liquid water hit it, as the Viking landers had demonstrated decades before, it released a large amount of oxygen…enough to create a sharp fizz and enough of a pop to fling a cloud of fine, dry dust into the air. Enough liquid hitting the ground all at once created the impression, if not the fact, of an explosion….
Garroway had first considered tossing the beer cans individually, like hand grenades, but he’d rapidly discarded that idea. One can exploded by itself made a small mess but simply wasn’t that spectacular. Besides, Marine armor was not designed for throwing hand grenades—a serious deficiency, so far as Knox was concerned. A large number of cans, however, spilled all at once from a hovering lobber across a large area, created a truly spectacular effect.
The devastating and totally unexpected nature of the attack had thrown the defenders into complete panic. In an instant, the discipline of the UN troops had vanished, as case after case of chemical bombs was flung from the hovering cargo shuttle, scattering their contents across broad footprints of desert. Some troops stood their ground, continuing to fire up at the lander; most fled, many of them dropping their weapons as they either scattered into the desert or ran in an ungainly mob back toward Cydonia Prime.
“What’ll it be, folks?” Elliott called down to the two bombardiers. “The trench or the UN’s HQ?”
“The trench, Captain,” Knox replied. “We want to open a hole for the major.”
“Hang on to your beer,” Elliott replied. “Coming around to the south now.”
The lander’s engine flared, jolting Knox and Ostrowsky as they clung to the cargo bay’s framework.
The trench was about a half kilometer or so away.
1711 HOURS GMT
Cydonia One ground position
One kilometer south of Cydonia
Prime
1426 hours MMT
More high-velocity bullets slashed into the sand dune, hurling up meter-high gouts of dust as the Marines tried to bury themselves just a little deeper in its welcome shadow. Garroway held his rifle up above his head, using its optics to transmit a magnified image of the enemy line to his helmet HUD display. He could just make out the line of the next dune on the horizon, 185.4 meters distant according to his rifle’s laser ranger, and occasional black spots that might be the heads of the enemy.