Mars Fire - Chapter XLI - Sol 16

Previous Chapters: Chapter I , II , III , IV , V , VI , VII , VIII , IX , X , XI , XII , XIII , XIV , XV , XVI , XVII , XVIII , XIX , XX , XXI , XXII , XXIII , XXIV , XXV , XXVI , XXVII , XXVIII , XXIX , XXX , XXXI , XXXII , XXXIII , XXXIV , XXXV , XXXVI , XXXVII , XXXVIII , XXXIX , XL

Recommended audio accompaniment for this chapter: Sacrifice

Dixon ended up doing a group order for the team, something with near-unpronounceable Portuguese names that sounded mangled even to Burrows’ untrained ear, and the food arrived in short order, courtesy of the unusual hour and near-empty restaurant. Burrows found himself salivating at the sight of plates of battered fish, heavy yellow rice, and pots filled with what looked and smelled like creamy garlic sauce. The aroma alone was intoxicating, and after the waitress rattled off the ingredients and finally left, there was a scramble for cutlery and serving spoons as everyone started dishing up

It had been worth the wait, Burrows thought to himself, as the first bite of garlic kicked the back of his throat. Stress and hunger did not make for a pleasant cocktail, and the food helped with both. For a while, only the sound of cutlery and the occasional shut-eyed moan from Dixon accompanied the table. Not even Pope could be distracted enough from his food to comment on that.

“I have a question though.” Ian, beside Reyn, sat forward when he eventually spoke. “If the Union has been seeing your - our - patrol routes for so long, why did they allow you to get close to Marsden Mines on the previous patrols? They must have known you were going there all along then.”

Burrows was still pondering the question through a mouthful of fish when Reyn replied.

“If I had to theorize, I’d say that losing CDM patrols around Marsden Mines would have made Command more suspicious, and thus more likely to act. It’s basic human nature: if you walk past an empty place where there is nothing going on, you barely notice it. But if someone now keeps you away from that place, and actively tries to keep it a secret, then you will absolutely want to go there and have a look around.”

“Sure… but then killing us on this recent patrol would have raised the same flags for Command,” Pope mumbled around a mouthful of rice before swallowing. “They would have ended up sending a second team anyway, to try and find us. As well as using the satellites to check for anything odd.”

“But with us dead or captured, Herricks would still be under cover. So who would have handled those missing-in-action search requests?” Burrows shook his head. “We would have become a footnote in some report, and Herricks and his goons would have been able to blow off anyone who tried looking too hard. We report to Taylor Base, and they would have made us disappear.”

“Must be a timing thing, then.” Pope paused with another forkful of rice halfway to his mouth. “They were probably staging their rovers somewhere else, and only decided to move them up at the last moment.”

“Possibly, yes. Seeing more rovers with every trip would have tipped us off to the buildup long before they were ready. You don’t assemble divisions on the border - you assemble them in the interior, and only ship them to the border once they are ready to invade. Which fits the timeline we are expecting for the next few weeks.” Burrows paused for a moment before continuing with a grimace. “Which then also raises the question of what else they have hidden in the interior, that we haven’t seen yet.”

“My, what a bright ray of sunshine and optimism you are.” Dixon gave a brief scowl in Burrows’ direction without taking his eye off the fish he was busy carving up.

“If you want optimism, try coming up with a plan to defend this place.” Burrows waved his fork at the dome around them. “This place was not exactly built with war in mind. How are you going to keep a thousand-strong rover fleet out of Stockton?”

“Step one would probably be to keep them away from Stockton as long as you can. Once the shooting starts here, you’re looking at massive casualties for any of the above-ground facilities.” Reyn looked pensive as he also considered the glass walls and metal beams stretching out around them to keep the Martian atmosphere at bay. “Explosive rounds and pressurised habitats make for a pretty bad combination. I’d make them bleed between here and the DMZ. Every zombie we stop in the east, is one less issue to arrive here.”

“Fifteen thousand issues might take a while to whittle down though. Step two would be the civilian population. Women, children, the elderly and the ill. Get everyone underground, and control the access points.” Burrows thought of the route they had taken from Fort O’Neill, and how the different areas were connected. “Then it becomes a bit like fighting in a ship, you just need to control the doorways. The regolith and rock layers above us will soak up most of the damage from the big guns, and we’ll be left dealing with infantry at the airlocks. Pope, what’s step three?”

“Same thing, but above-ground. Funnel their ground movement into choke points, and hit them hard when they are bunched up. Use the mining equipment to put down trenches where you can, and get the crete-casters to make those funny triangle pyramid thingies. Dragon’s teeth, I think they’re called.” Pope’s fork stabbed at the table surface as he sketched out imaginary battle lines. “Go heavy on the silica and ceramics, so that they have better resistance to the laser melters the Union will probably be bringing along. Stack those everywhere we don’t want their rovers to move.”

“Step four is them just bypassing us and leaving us underground to run out of supplies.” Dixon pointed at the remaining food waiting on the platters between them, while shaking his head. “Surviving underground is going to require the exact same resources as above-ground, we’ve all seen how that works. Once they take the geothermal plant here, you have no power. You’ll be left using max-cells for everything from heating to atmosphere, and I’m pretty sure you’ll run out of those before you run out of food. And you will run out of food, since most of the agri-labs are above-ground - and all of them require power for heating and light, even the few that work underground.”

“My, what a bright ray of sunshine and optimism you are…” Burrows sat back and crossed his arms over his chest, shaking his head. “It’s not going to be an easy fight. Whether it’s Stockton or Cora Springs or even Home One, it’s not going to be easy.”

“That’s exactly my point. We should not be seeing the defence of Stockton as our main plan.” This time it was Dixon who started stabbing at the tabletop. “Once the fight gets here, we’ve already lost. It’s just a matter of time then before they dig out the last resistance. The same thing for Culheimer, and New Hopetown, and Rhodes. Whether it’s a week or a month or a year, the cities will fall. Trying to survive a siege here is a losing strategy. Our focus should be to keep them away from here for as long as possible.”

“That was my step, actually,” Reyn quipped, but there was no mirth in his voice. Burrows could sense the grim reality of the situation - felt before, and now finally spoken out loud - sinking into the men around the table.

“So we have to hit them before they get here, and we have to hit them so hard that they change their minds about it all.” Burrows looked around the table, seeing the frowns and concerned faces. “Ian, you’ve been terribly quiet. What do you think?”

Ian looked up from where he was chasing the last rice on his plate, and frowned for a moment before answering.

“If you have to hit hard, then I guess the question should be what is your heaviest hammer?”

“Pope’s head,” Dixon promptly replied, and got a raised finger from the miner.

“Rocks in orbit, probably. NorAm’s been experimenting with dropping those on the polar ice-caps to melt them. Less fallout than the original nuclear idea. We don’t have that type of reach though.” Reyn thought for a moment before continuing. “Next step down would then be nukes, I suppose, but again - we don’t have those. I think a lot of people would also be rather upset with us if we started throwing those around.”

“And we can’t accidentally drop something from orbit on the Union, because they are already using that same excuse to explain away their damn space junk that keeps falling on us.” Pope rubbed at his chin for a moment before laughing. “I guess it’s a bit like that whole virgin birth story, it’s only really believable the first time.”

The conversation rambled on in the same vein for another handful of minutes before the expected call finally came: Hayes wanted to see them again. Dusk had started to make itself known, shading the skies outside with darkness to the east, and while Dixon settled their bill, Burrows took a moment to watch the city moving around outside the dome. Buggies and rovers were still trundling along the streets, and the distant stickman shape of suited figures were visible trudging along some of the avenues, bright against the surrounding coffee and cinnamon dust shades of Mars.

The discussion about the city’s defence nagged at him. The idea of surrendering the city and not fighting back felt viscerally wrong to him - even as his rational mind agreed with the issues that Dixon had raised. Digging in and fighting here would be a losing battle, a slow slide into an inevitable defeat of starvation, asphyxiation, and hypothermia. Mars was not their ally in this regard.

On the other hand, what options did they have to hit the Union with, even just as a deterrent? They had no big hammers, as Ian’s simple question had illustrated. They had infantry units of varying qualities and capabilities, they had a small rover fleet, they had an even smaller space-capable Marine contingent, and they had a home-ground advantage - on a dead planet where every dune, valley and rocky ridge looked much the same as the next. They had no rivers or oceans to keep invaders away, or forests where enemy troops could be bogged down with guerrilla tactics. Mars was open and flat - a tank commander’s dream, made into reality here by gun-toting rovers that could move at speed and strike at will. It was a reality that the Union had clearly understood better than everyone else, as witnessed by the massive fleets they had managed to build up.

Bear State also had no secret base with a secret weapon, unless Command had really been holding out on them all these years. The thought did not raise as much mirth with Burrows as it would have a week before.

Colonel Hayes was waiting for them outside the compound gate at Fort O’Neill when they left the Stockton tunnels and approached the compound via the streets. Much like their own khaki CDM suits, there was nothing to distinguish him from the guards which manned the gate, except for a hardline hub that he carried in one gloved hand. He signaled comms channel four once they were close enough.

“I hope you boys at least had something to eat since last I saw you.” Hayes motioned for them to follow him once they reached the gate, and they set off down the side of the road, the CDM compound walls looming over them on the one side. “These council sessions are apparently being planned by people who don’t need food. Some of us are struggling.”

“I think Dixon might have something left in his beard…,” was as far as Pope got before an elbow in the side sent him staggering off with a wheeze. Snorts of laughter filled the channel from the rest of the team - including from the colonel.

Hayes took them down a side street into a space between two of the nearby pod buildings, simple two-storey structures that had been printed, emplaced and covered with regolith years ago. Dust had accumulated in most of the cracks and nooks, and the one visible building entrance was a rust-streaked airlock that had frozen in the half-opened position. There was a second door, which looked like a garage bay entrance, but it had been welded shut and partially covered with rocks in years past. The space appeared to have been a rover yard at some point, judging by the sand-blasted rover carcasses that sat accompanied by stacks of rover wheels in the one corner of the area. Burrows could not see anything else standing out in the space, and when he turned full circle he realised that the position of the pod buildings, coupled with the bulk of Fort O’Neill looming behind them, made it impossible for any of the surrounding structures to get a line of sight into the space. It was the perfect spot for an outside meeting without observers or eavesdroppers being able to get a line on them.

Hayes set the hardline hub down in one of the open rover hulls, and one by one all of them plugged in with their own cables. Burrows was the last, and killed his shortwave channel for good measure once he heard the hardline tone.

“We’re still sweeping out bugs and Union code from the base systems, so we’re going to be doing this the paranoid, frontier way for a while longer.” Hayes patted the top of the hardline hub, and a brief smile creased his grim face. “I’ve been coming here so often the past few months, it’s going to feel really strange to talk freely indoors again.”

“I’ll get right down to business though. You boys have kicked the rat nest good and proper now with this Marsden thing, and we’re seeing a lot of movement from some of the suspects we have been monitoring for the past few months. The Division Seven teams have been snatching up people all over the big cities for the past two days, and they expect that house-keeping exercise to keep running for a while still.” Hayes took time to look each of them squarely in the eyes. Burrows got a respectful nod when it was his turn. “You did well out there. All of you. You kept your heads cool when the enemy was squeezing, and you got the most important part of the mission done: the recon data. You got the info we needed, even though it was not the info that we wanted.”

There were several rueful chuckles at that.

“So while Division Seven is going to be cleaning house in the interior, we now need to start looking at cleaning house on the outside. That’s where you and the rest of the Minutemen come in,” Hayes continued. “You’ve heard about the mobilisation orders by now. Everyone who wants to serve or has served in the past, is being activated. There’s a lot of work to be done, and we will absolutely not have enough time for all of it. General Maxdine and his staff are looking at some really hard decisions right now, and the only thing that can help here is time. We need more time.”

Burrows remembered the package that Luddough had given him inside the base, and realised that he knew exactly where the conversation was going to go next.

“We’re going to activate the Ranger teams.” Hayes was silent for a moment after the announcement, letting it sink in with the men. Pope was beginning to smile, while Burrows caught a frown flashing across Reyn’s face before it disappeared again. “You’re all qualified, except for Private Drees here, and some of you have actually worn the patch before as well. This time is going to be different. When you put that patch on now, it might be for the last time. I need you all to understand that before you give me an answer.”

Dust swirled between them, curling around their legs for a moment before dancing off into the midst of the rover yard. Burrows felt his thoughts turning inwards, and found that there was a pool of expectant calm waiting there, beneath the chop and bustle of the surface.

A part of him had been expecting this, even before Luddough’s gift.

Pope was the first one to respond, reaching up and pulling the Minuteman patch off the left arm of his EVA suit. The scrap of blue Union fabric behind the patch was halfway to the ground before he caught it. Dixon and Reyn followed suit moments later, and Burrows was the last one to remove the quartered shield design from his arm before tucking it into a side pocket. Ian, wearing the same patch, looked about as confused as one could be, but knew enough to keep quiet. His own patch stayed on.

Hayes looked at each of them in turn, and nodded. He lingered on Ian when it was his turn.

“Private Drees, I don’t want an answer from you right now. Talk to Captain Burrows on the trip back, and have him explain the Ranger situation to you. You need to make an informed decision about this, and there is no way in Hell - pardon my language - that you could know that right now.” Hayes turned to the rest of them. “The rest of you, I’m counting on you all understanding what this means. Sergeant Heaney?”

“I do.” Reyn gave a brief nod as he spoke.

“I do.” Dixon nodded as well.

“I do.” Pope’s grin showed a great many teeth against his tanned skin. On his right arm, the Seven Craters patch was an orange-red bloodstain that looked on in silence.

“I do.” Burrows also nodded when it was his turn. He thought of Tilda, and their unborn child, and the future that he wanted for them, and felt the world contract around him until only his heartbeat and the eOX susurration of the atmosphere in his suit remained.

This is it.

This is the final battle now.

“Good. You have the patches already?” Hayes’ words drew Burrows back to the present, and he felt through his pockets for the package that Luddough had given him earlier. Opening it with gloves on took a moment longer than before, and then he was handing the new patches out to the waiting men.

The Ranger patch was a simple shield design, identical in size and shape to that of the Minuteman ones, except that it was fully black. A stylized letter X, in gold, swirled across the front of the shield. Burrows watched the rest of the team apply it to their suits, and finished off with putting one on his own arm. There was a single patch left in the package, for Ian, and Burrows stowed that back into his pocket again. Ian’s conversation would come, in time.

Hayes gave them all approving looks as they finished, before turning back to Burrows.

“Do you have a name yet for your Ranger unit, Captain?”

“I do, sir. Sergeant Heaney and I were part of a Dust Team before, and I’m thinking we’ll just use that again.” Burrows looked across at the wide-eyed Ian, and gave him a conspiratorial wink. “We’ll be Dust Team Five this time, given our numbers and our current regiment.”

There were nods of agreement from the other Home One men, and Pope patted Ian on the shoulder with a paternal smile.

“Good. Then as Dust Team Five, I have your first mission for you. You’re not going to like it, though.” Hayes had a grim twist to his mouth as he looked at the assembled men. “I need you to go back to Marsden Mines.”

“Eh… Sir, could you say that again?” Dixon’s frown threatened to pull his eyebrows all the way down into his eyes. “You want us to go back to Marsden Mines?”

“You heard it correctly the first time, Specialist. I want you to go back there, and delay that invasion fleet as long as you can.” Hayes folded his arms across his chest as he spoke. “We need to add time on the clock here to get our defences up and start the evacuations. Once the Union decides to start moving, it will be a matter of days, maybe weeks at the maximum, before they take all of Bear State. Every day we hold them off, is a day longer in the fight, and a day longer for a miracle to happen.”

“Is there any particular plan of attack here, sir? Four or five of us won’t last long against everything they have in that base.” Pope’s frown was challenging Dixon’s at this point.

“Landmines. As many as you can get into the ground at Marsden.” Hayes pointed at Fort O’Neill behind him with a thumb. “You can requisition as many as you need from the supplies here, along with demo charges and timers. Anything we can do at this point to stop that rover fleet from moving, is on the table. I’m leaving the details of the execution up to you, but the basic requirement is simple: we cannot have them leaving that base when they get their orders.”

The silence that followed was heavy. Burrows thought of the sheer scale of the request - the Marsden crater was roughly five kilometres in diameter, with multiple road and rail access points cut into the crater rim - and realised that it would require a planning session much longer than what they had available now. Dusk had almost fully fallen into night at this point, and the western horizon was a smear of greys and orange where the sun was already setting.

“What’s the timeline for this, sir? We’ll need some time to plan and prep for something of this size.” Burrows nodded in Ian’s direction. “We might also need to brush up on some training, when it comes to the demolition work.”

“You need to get moving by Friday morning latest, if you want to get on-site by Sunday evening. Long-range forecasts are showing a storm front building to the north, and it will be hitting Marsden by Monday morning next week.” Hayes sighed, and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment in a gesture that Burrows recognised all too well. Fatigue, frustration, and resignation warred with each other on the colonel’s face when his eyes snapped open again. “It’s the only cover I can give you, and it’s going to be rough. We know the Union does not like operating outside when there are storms in their areas, so you’ll have to make the best of it.”

“Will there be other teams available to assist us, sir?” Burrows cleared his throat before continuing. “Marsden is a pretty big site, and we’re going to get stretched pretty thin on that crater rim.”

“Negative on that. We don’t have enough Ranger teams as it is at this point, and every one of them is getting a hairy task like yours. One of the teams is going to cut the railway line between Marsden and Seven Craters, but they’ll be fifty or more clicks north of you at that point. The best I can do is get you mule units for humping cargo.” Hayes gave a grin that disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. “I know you boys enjoy your hiking, but for this one you’ll need a hand. The mules should be able to carry most of the demolition that you need. Then it will be up to you to deploy it wherever it will have the most impact.”

“Which brings me to the next point. Whatever you do out there, you cannot be seen or found until the Union moves first.” Hayes sighed again, shaking his head. “We have to play the political game here, to try and build up more international support in the coming days. We absolutely cannot afford to be seen as the aggressors right now. It won’t make much of a difference to the Union, but it might make a difference to our neighbours and the Euro and NorAm blocs. Any support they decide to throw our way, could have an impact. So whatever your plan ends up being, it has to be unseen and unheard until you have clear evidence that the Union is moving out to invade. That means sticking around on-site for up to five or six days. They will likely move before then, but we don’t exactly want to hope for that.”

There were concerned glances all around, and Burrows found his own frown starting to build as well. The precaution was understandable - but it added a layer of complexity that had the potential to throw sand in their gears at a moment’s notice. Additionally, the logistics required for an additional four days in the field would seriously constrain the amount of demolition they could carry - which meant that some hard trade-offs would have to be made during their planning phase.

“Sir, is there any good news on this mission?” Reyn had his hands clasped behind his back, and Burrows could see how hard he was working to keep his face straight. “It’s feeling a bit dark at the moment.”

Hayes looked off to the side, at the rover hull that loomed over them, and the silence stretched out. When he eventually looked back, his eyes were black pits in the encroaching evening darkness.

“Spend time with your families and loved ones. Get your affairs sorted out. Make sure your DNA backups and waivers are done and on system. Don’t leave your people behind without the paperwork and access they need to clean up if you don’t come back.” Hayes uncrossed his arms and reached out to place a hand on Burrows’ shoulder. “There’s no good news on this mission, or this coming war. Whatever good news we want, we’ll have to make our own. And you boys are going to be the ones paying the price for that.”

The walk back to Fort O’Neill, in the dark, was a long and quiet one after that.

Next chapter: TBC