“Bring it up on holo,” Colonel Campbell orders.
Three new display windows open on the CIC’s central holotable, all displaying various feeds from the Indy’s high-powered optical surveillance gear. Mars is shrouded in thick, gray, swirling clouds almost from pole to pole. The Lankies had over two months to set up their terraforming network and flip the atmosphere to suit their preferences. I know that right now, the carbon dioxide levels on Mars are ten times what they used to be before the Lankies got there. If we ever get the place back, it will have to be terraformed all over again.
“Lots of radiation hotspots.” The tactical officer highlights a few locations on the holographic orb representing Mars. “One, two, three, four . . . That’s half a dozen just in this part of the northern hemisphere. Looks like fifteen-, twenty-kiloton tactical nukes.”
“Tried to stop them when they landed,” Colonel Campbell says. “Looks like it wasn’t enough.”
I see the familiar latticework of Lanky towns dotting the landscape below. Their shelters look nothing like human housing. They are interconnected, spreading out from a central point in what looks like a fractal pattern from above. Like everything else the Lankies make, their places look like they’re grown, not built—not a straight line or right angle anywhere. A Lanky settlement looks more like a coral reef than anything else. From the number and size of them, it’s clear that the Lankies have been busy, but Mars is a big place, and they haven’t settled even 10 percent of it yet.
“Maybe their resources are as limited as ours,” Major Renner suggests. “I expected more seed ships than this. Maybe they only have so many of them.”
“Wish we could pop a few nukes on those Lanky towns on the way past,” the colonel says. “Look at that. Ten, fifteen, twenty . . . That’s close to thirty settlements on this quarter of the hemisphere already.”
“At this rate, they’ll have the place settled in a year, maybe two,” I say.
“And then it’s Earth,” Colonel Campbell says darkly.
“Periapsis burn in thirty seconds,” Major Renner says. She picks up the handset for the 1MC. “This is the XO. All hands, prepare for slingshot burn.” She turns off the 1MC. “Helm, stand by on main engines,” she orders. “Full burn, on my mark. Give me a twenty-second burn.”
“Standing by on main engines, for twenty-second burn,” the helmsman confirms.
“Twenty seconds to burn.”
“Tactical, please tell me we still have a clear path ahead,” Colonel Campbell says.
“Optical shows clear to the periapsis,” the tactical officer replies. “There’s a ton of floating wreckage twenty degrees off our starboard bow, but we’ll clear it by five kilometers at least.”
“Let’s hope they don’t have any roadblocks stacked up on the other side. XO, take us around.”
“Ten seconds to burn,” Major Renner announces. “Helm, on my mark. In six . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one. Burn.”
The hull shudders again as the main engines light off at full thrust. We are trading acceleration with Mars, using the gravity of the planet to bend our trajectory around and toward Earth, and stepping on the accelerator at the same time. The plot curve on the holotable display updates as we reach the periapsis point of our Mars approach. We are just far enough away from the planet’s surface to avoid the upper atmosphere and the Lanky minefields that will be scattered in low orbit to catch approaching intruders.
“Five seconds,” the XO calls out. “Stay on the throttle. Ten seconds.”
“Tactical, I want a full sweep on the active kit once we’re out of the parabolic and on our way,” Colonel Campbell orders. “We’re a huge IR flare right now. If they spot us, they’ll spot us, active gear or not.”
“Aye, sir,” the tactical officer replies. “Warming up the active. Sensor sweep in forty-five seconds.”
With Indy in the iron grip of physics, there isn’t much for anyone to do other than wait and look at the holotable’s display. The icon representing Indy shoots around Mars at what seems an agonizingly slow pace. I know that we’re going much faster than anyone who has done an orbital skip of Mars in at least the last fifty years, but I wish that little blue icon could make its way around the holographic orb much quicker.
“Fifteen seconds,” the XO calls. “Coming around the bend. Cut main engines in three . . . two . . . one . . . now. Steady as she goes.”
We shoot out from the dark side of Mars and onto our projected course toward Earth. I watch the optical feeds still live on the holotable, which still show mostly swirling cloud cover and the very occasional patch of red Martian soil. I don’t know the details of the Lanky takeover, but I doubt they had any more warning than any of the colony planets we have lost over the last five years. That means the pole-to-pole blanket of clouds below is now a funeral shroud for over twenty million people, most of them civilians.
“Sensors online,” the tactical officer says. “Active sweep commencing.”
The holotable display updates with information. Lanky ships or minefields don’t show up on radar, but the optics can spot them at short to medium range. Everything man-made shows up on radar just fine, however. The combined inputs from the optical lenses and Indy’s active sensors paints a grim picture on the holographic sphere and shows us just how blind we have been flying these past few minutes.
“Son of a bitch,” Colonel Campbell says.
The space around Mars is littered with wreckage parts, dozens of spaceship hulls drifting in the void, some still bleeding air and frozen fluids from their shattered hulls. I’ve seen the damage the salvos from a Lanky seed ship can do to our fleet, but I’ve never seen carnage at this scale. The computer collates the information from the sensors and the transmissions from the crash beacons that are wailing their repetitive little distress tunes, and marks each wreck with its name and hull number. The Lankies were equal-opportunity exterminators—the sea of icons before and below us is a mixed cluster of red and blue colors, SRA and NAC ships united in destruction.
“Two bogeys inbound, closing in fast from bearings zero-four-eight and one-one-five. Designate Lima-11 and Lima-13. They’re on an intercept course, sir.” The tactical officer updates the holotable display, and two orange icons appear on the plot, steadily moving toward our trajectory.
“We’re going too fast for them, but let’s increase the margins a bit. Helm, full burn on main engines. Make it a five-second burn.”
“Five-second burn, aye,” the helmsman acknowledges.