Читать книгу Operation Crimson Storm - Robert Reginald - Страница 14

CHAPTER NINE

FAREWELL, EARTH’S BLISS

Chance favors only the mind that’s prepared.

—Louis Pasteur

Alex Smith, 31 Bi-July, Mars Year vii

U.S.S. Armageddon, in Orbit Around Planet Mars

Different elements of the main fleet actually arrived on Mars station in various stages, as had previously been planned. Some of the ships had augmented their ion drives with chemical or nuclear rockets, or had lighter payloads, deliberately to allow them to dock earlier than the huge transport vessels.

Among these were the great circular Warstations, heavily armored craft with thick hull plating and numerous offensive weapons; these were designed to be parked permanently over the planet in stationary orbit, spaced out evenly around the globe. They would provide cover for the arrival of our main fleet, and also take an integral part in the ongoing military operations that would commence soon thereafter. In theory, at least, the entire surface of Mars could be scanned simultaneously from the heavens once the stations were deployed.

A second group of advance ships consisted of the Interference Runners, which had been sent out in front of the fleet to defend it from just such an attack as had occurred recently. These unmanned craft were filled with explosives, and were intended to ram and blow up anything physical that the Martians might heave our way. Once they reached Mars proper, they would be used to bombard selective targets on the surface, and thus gradually be used up.

Also deployed in advance of the fleet were a few strange-looking cylinders that would eventually be unfolded at one end, opening up faces that looked almost like giant metallic umbrellas. The surfaces on the outside of these ships were so polished that they reflected back to their source nearly 100% of all the visible light waves they received. This was one major defense against the amplified Martian sting-rays, enough, we hoped, to allow the Warstations to find and target the surface emplacements generating the rays before they could do any actual damage to our ships.

The fleet had to be deployed in a certain sequence in order to be effective. We intended to use the Martian moons to shadow and protect many of our initial operations, while the Warstations were still being maneuvered into their final orbital positions.

The first ships arrived at Mars on July the Eleventh, and were immediately moved into their “watch-and-defend” positions over the planet. The most vulnerable period for the Warstations was the initial week, as they were jockeyed into their permanent geosynchronous orbits. Cover was partially provided by the Martian moons, but these transited so quickly across the sky (Phobos circled the Red Planet in just seven hours) that their ability to target any particular site on the planet was often severely limited. Two of the stations, the Buenos Aires and the Miami, were destroyed in the first few days, but these losses had been anticipated, and we had more than enough surplus coverage to spare.

The core of the fleet, which included the Armageddon and the other big transports, attained high Mars orbit on the last day of July. We were using the umbrella ships to shadow Phobos from attacks by the sting-rays, while the Thunderbolt was carefully maneuvered into position in the shadow of the inner Martian moon. Then General Burgess officially moved his seat of command to Phobos Base, and the troops and supplies were quickly offloaded from the vessel into the caves and structures that had been prepared for them over the past two years by the advance scouting party from Expedition II.

The Martians tried to penetrate our orbital defensive wall on several occasions, but in each case one of the Interference Runners was directed onto the site of the Martian surface emplacement, which was utterly destroyed in the ensuing explosion. Resistance there gradually diminished as the debarkation of the fleet continued.

The Armageddon was next in line. Thunderbolt was gradually moved into higher orbit, preparatory to starting on its long journey home, manned by just a twenty-five-person maintenance crew. The trip to Earth would take the better part of a year, but the vessel was just too valuable to leave permanently on Mars station. It would return to the Red Planet again on Expedition IV along with its sister vessels, bringing reinforcements of ships, troops, equipment, and supplies two years hence.

Becky, Mellie, and I watched our slow approach to Phobos on the viewscreen in our cramped cabin. Once more we were in “lockdown” or “safe” mode, with all of the airtight doors throughout the vessel being snugly secured in the event of sudden attack. The Martian moon, a large meteor really, just drifted closer and closer, the bulk of the planet it orbited being gradually blocked from our vision, until we nudged up close against the docks awaiting us.

“It’s good to see something solid again,” Becky said.

“Yeah, but it’s not much better than empty space,” I said.

Phobos is a gray-colored, elliptical-shaped planetoid almost seventeen miles long, densely covered with craters, including one massive structure that clearly shows the cracking caused by the ancient impact on its surface. Like its smaller sister satellite, Deimos, it always displays the same face towards Mars. The gravity of the moon is so slight that everything on the Base must be anchored to its surface, lest a kick or a touch dislodge it into empty space. The original survey team in Year Six had very carefully used parts of the supply ships that had accompanied that mission to establish a permanent port facility on the surface, reworking the cargo containers into a chain of heavily-shielded, interconnected living quarters and storage facilities that were firmly bolted into the rock. These had been augmented by several small excavations into the moon itself, and by multiple emplacements of defensive missiles and lasers.

We were greeted personally by the Base Commander, Colonel Rufus “Rufe” Choate, and escorted to temporary communal lodgings. It would take three days of continual effort to unburden the great spacecraft of its supplies, but in the end the Armageddon would also set sail for Earth, making way for the third of the expedition’s ships to offload its passengers and cargo—the great French vessel, Le Fléau. Similar efforts were occurring on Deimos, where some of the smaller members of the fleet began disembarking their precious supplies, reinforcing the human complement there, and augmenting its weaponry, basic amenities, and living accommodations.

We’d just reached our new quarters when the klaxons sounded.

“Orange Alert!” blared the loudspeakers.

We were under attack again!

We quickly strapped ourselves into our hammocks. I could feel the thump-thump-thump vibrations in the wall from the launching of the missiles. I couldn’t reach our com set, so we were completely blind and dumb as to what was happening around us in space.

“Daddy, I’m scared!” Mellie said.

I reached out and held her hand. It was all I could do. Becky comforted her on the other side.

When the “All Clear” signal sounded several hours later, I released myself and immediately turned on the set.

“Central Command has confirmed,” the announcer said, “that Phobos Base was attacked by three Martian ships similar in configuration to those that originally landed on Earth. They apparently were launched quite some time ago from an unknown alien base in the Asteroid Belt, and were far enough off the plane of Mars’s orbit that none of our scanners picked them up until just before the assault. All of the alien vessels have now been destroyed or neutralized.

“One attacker was downed by the Warstation San Bernardino, firing from Mars orbit. Some of the fragments of the destroyed craft impacted on Barracks C-8 and C-9, killing twenty people there. A second invader was sufficiently damaged by our Base defenses that it was sent whirling off into space. The third alien damaged the communications array on the Thunderbolt with its sting-ray before being rammed by the pod Albert Einstein, piloted by Lt. Andrew Kapel, who died in the head-on crash. We’re assured by Col. Morris, Captain of the Thunderbolt, that that vessel can and will be promptly repaired.

“General Burgess has released a statement commending our brave troops for their vigilance, and vowing to eliminate the Martian menace once and for all.”

This statement was rerun every few minutes throughout the next day.

But when we joined some of the other families and our friends in the mess hall, we heard a very different story. The Base Commander was reportedly furious over the failure of our tracking teams to pick up the incoming aliens until just a few moments before they hit. The third Martian had apparently intended to smash its craft into the center of our complex, and only the quick thinking and selfless sacrifice of the pod pilot had saved the facility from major, perhaps irreparable damage. Once again we’d been lucky. The officer in charge of the radar emplacements had been reassigned.

Thereafter things quieted again. One by one the major ships of the fleet were maneuvered into the docking facilities on both satellites, until the moons were each completely covered with storage bunkers and materiel on the sides facing away from Mars. More facilities and containers were erected in quick order, and these too were rapidly filled to the brim. By this time the several hundred smaller supply shuttles and pods were also beginning to make their appearances in Mars orbit; these were simply anchored together in space, being partially shadowed by the two moons and protected by our defensive Warstations. Eventually, they would be maneuvered to land on the planet itself, providing future living quarters and base camps for the settlers there.

Becky and Mellie and I had to share our quarters with two other families; we could only use our sleeping hammocks for eight hours a day before they had to be vacated and filled by other warm bodies. The situation became so crowded on Phobos Base that there was nothing to do but seek out whatever open space we could locate and then stay put for hours at a time. We spent our days talking to whomever passed us by. The Advisory Council had yet to be convened since our arrival, and we heard no news whatever about the progress of the war. I had absolutely nothing to occupy my time, and no access to any communication nodes.

I encountered Mindon a day or two later in the commissary or mess hall. The food on the Base was uniformly bad. We just had tubes of water to wash it down, and not much of that.

“You still having dreams?” he asked, as he pulled himself down next to me with his bottle of lunch.

“Off and on,” I said. “They’re never the same, and they’re hard to describe. Some of them are so strange that it’s as if I’ve been transported to Never-Never Land.”

“It must be the Martians.”

“That’s what I thought too, but some of these dreams, Mindon, some of them can’t possibly be scenes from or in Mars. They’re just too weird. I mean, we’re talking about floating giants and bizarre colors and fiery vistas, all in vivid, three-dimensional forms. It doesn’t fit.”

“Then what could they be?”

“I really have no idea,” I said, “but some of the others are having them too. It has to mean something, although damned if I know what. And why me?”

Geoff Alexander then pulled himself over to us.

“What is this goop, anyway?” he asked, holding up a plastic squeeze bottle of something that looked like a cross between oatmeal and the “green slime.”

“Some kind of puréed vegetable?” Mindon said.

“It’s neither vegetable nor animal nor mineral,” I said, “and it doesn’t taste very good either.”

“You would have thought that, having traveled all this distance, we could have done something a little better than gory goo or grokky glop,” Geoff said.

“Yeah,” we both chimed in.

“We were just talking about Alex’s dreams,” Mindon said. “Has anyone made an effort to record these things or compare them in any way?”

“Not to my knowledge,” I said.

“Well, maybe they ought to. Maybe the Martians or whoever are trying to tell us something. Maybe this is the way they communicate.”

“I can’t believe that. It would be terribly inefficient, among other things, and from what I observed of the aliens on Earth, they were always efficient.”

“Still.”

“Let’s bring it up at the next Council meeting,” Geoff said, putting his container away. “Gad, I can’t take any more of this crap. Nothing but the green grog morning, noon, and night. At this pace, I’m going to lose weight, guys.”

“Yeah,” we all said in unison, and then we went our separate ways again.