We drive back around the hill to the spot we had occupied before. The valley and the plateau below us aren’t visible to the naked eye because the air is thick with red-and-brown Mars dust bounced off the ground by the low-altitude detonation of the atomic warhead. I switch to alternate view modes until I have an infrared/thermal overlay. Lieutenant Stahl can’t seem to stop gaping at the evil-looking black-and-red mushroom cloud that is roiling into the sky just seven or eight klicks in front of us.
Below, the seed ship is a shattered hull half its original size. Parts of it are still glowing white-hot with the energy from the point-blank nuclear fireball that evaporated the top half of the three-kilometer-long hull. The ship has crashed back to the ground and back into the depression from which it rose a few minutes ago.
“Phalanx, Tailpipe Red One. Poststrike assessment.”
“Go ahead on poststrike.”
“Direct hit, target destroyed. Pass it on to the gunnery department on Kirov. They just bagged themselves a seed ship.”
“Copy that, Tailpipe Red One.”
“And pass the word on to the task force. They need to put all the remaining nukes onto the settlements we’ve charted. I think they all have seed ships under the surface.”
“Be advised that we already have that in the works.”
“We are heading to LZ Red for dustoff. Tailpipe One out.”
I kill the comms and nudge Lieutenant Stahl to draw his attention away from the mushroom cloud.
“Head for the spaceport,” I say. “We need to get there before the last drop ship leaves.”
“Two megatons,” Lieutenant Stahl says, wonder and awe in his voice. “That’s a bit of overkill, is it not?”
“Is no such thing as overkill,” Dmitry replies. “Anything worth breaking is worth breaking a lot.”
CHAPTER 21
GETTING OFF THE BEACH AT HIGH TIDE
It takes us two hours to get back to Olympus Spaceport. The Weasel is very fast, but the area is lousy with big groups of Lankies moving in the same direction, and Lieutenant Stahl has his hands full weaving a course between them that keeps us at a safe distance.
“Well, that’s gonna be a no-go,” I say when I see the scene on the plateau in front of the spaceport.
The vista reminds me of the ancient western movies they used to play on the Networks in the shitty hours of the morning—natives circling the wagon trains of the intrepid settlers. There are many hundreds of Lankies on the perimeter of the spaceport, all pressing in and trying to overcome the defenses. There are drop ships in the air and attack birds making runs from higher altitudes, but our presence in the skies seems greatly diminished from when the fourth wave arrived and the base operations were in full swing. From ten klicks away, I see gun emplacements on the tarmac, autonomous SRA autocannon mounts next to crewed NAC autocannons, mules with twenty-five-millimeter gun turrets, and lots and lots of infantry in firing positions between the buildings and hangars. Inside the base, at the drop-ship pad, there are Wasps and Akulas taking off without engaging Lankies, and I am guessing they’re loaded with civvies and troops for the evacuation that must have been ordered while we were busy with calling in the nuke on the seed ship and the long drive back to the base.
“We will not make it past the Lankies,” Lieutenant Stahl says. “And if we do, we may run into friendly fire.”
I get on the brigade channel and contact C2. The officer who answers the radio sounds very stressed.
“C2, this is Tailpipe Red One. I am ten klicks outside the wire with the Russian combat controller and our Eurocorps liaison, and there’s about a thousand Lankies in our way. Any way you can send a drop ship to pick us up?”
“Uh, that’s a negative, Tailpipe Red One. All our birds are committed to attack runs or evacs. You’re going to have to run the gauntlet. But be quick about it. The evac window is only open for another sixty-five minutes, and Phalanx is out of missiles, so there won’t be any more holes in the minefield.”
“Well, fuck me.” I decide not to argue with the C2 officer. It takes a drop ship forty minutes just to make it up into orbit, so we have twenty-five minutes to hitch a ride or be stranded on Mars until our air supplies quit. “On our way. Save us three seats.”
“I have bad news for you, Lieutenant,” I say. “No pickup from our side. How about yours?”
“Eurocorps has already evacuated,” he says, a hint of dejection in his voice.
“Dmitry?”
The Russian just shakes his head.
“Okay, then. We have twenty-five minutes to make the landing pad if we want to get out of here alive.”
“You take gun, and I drive vehicle,” Dmitry suggests. “Is like busy traffic hour in Moscow, remember?”
“I cannot let you drive, because you have no official clearance on this vehicle type,” Lieutenant Stahl says. Dmitry and I grin, and my grin turns into a short laugh when I realize that the German lieutenant isn’t joking.
The air base has two access roads, one from the north and one from the south. We are coming in from the north, using the smooth pavement to bring the Weasel up to maximum speed. Three kilometers before the main gate, a group of Lankies block the road, but their attention is turned away from us.
“All units, all units!” I shout into the local defense channel. “You have a friendly MAV coming in on the north road, so check your fire.”
Lieutenant Stahl swerves around the Lankies, who react too late to keep up with us. The Weasel has an honest-to-goodness warning horn, and the German lieutenant honks it as we zoom past the Lankies, emitting a loud and jaunty three-note warble from unseen amplified speakers. Dmitry just shakes his head and grins at me.
We could be running under stealth, but then our own troops won’t see us and may mistakenly put cannon fire into us, so Lieutenant Stahl leaves the camo off and relies on his speed and agility to make it across the beaten zone in front of the airfield’s runways. We are dodging groups of Lankies while tracers and cannon shells are coming our way from the direction of the hangars. I feel like I just drove into a live-fire range from the wrong end. Belatedly, I hope that the SRA cannon techs have added Eurocorps and NAC vehicles to the List of Things That Aren’t Enemies to Be Shot to Ribbons in the targeting computers of their autonomous sentry guns.