One Day on Mars

2:23 PM Mars Tharsis Standard Time

The two conjoined spaceships had fallen from near a Mars-synchronous altitude where half of the battle had taken place and dropped through space, slamming into the Martian upper atmosphere at over sixteen kilometers per second. The initial heating and impact with the atmosphere had caused anything on the pile of wreckage that was the least bit loose to let go. The battle had taken place in non-Keplerian orbits ranging from Mars-synchronous altitudes of over thirty thousand kilometers to near-space at thirty kilometers above the surface of the planet. As the ship fell it didn't fall as a typical deorbiting spacecraft would, since it was not in a typical orbit—the hauler had the same type of gravity-modifying propellantless drive that enabled such orbits. Although the hauler had lost its main propulsion capability, it still had attitude control to some degree and managed to put itself in a spiraling nonstandard trajectory that would lead into the large Martian city below.

Atmospheric drag chewed away at the two wrecked ships, their exterior hull plating ablating away as the friction ionized it layer at a time. The carbon nanotube, titanium, and composite fiber reinforced metals held up to a lot of stress, but the force of reentry impact was beyond the limits of many of the joints and connections of a healthy ship, much less two ships that had been battered to hell and gone and then stuck together by the sheer force of collision.

The structural integrity fields of the Thatcher continued to hold while the Seppy hauler began to strip away like an onion layer at a time from the aerodynamic forces. At one hundred kilometers from the surface of the planet the ship was still screaming through the upper atmosphere at sixteen kilometers per second. The ships continued to deorbit into the atmosphere on a trajectory leading them for the Mons City domes. At fifty kilometers altitude the aerodynamic friction had broken off most of the pieces that were going to break off and the falling ships had shed more than three-fourths of their energy, reducing velocity by a factor of sixteen times. By the time the vessels reached twenty-five kilometers altitude the conjoined ships were traveling at about eight hundred kilometers per hour and were beginning to shake loose from each other.

"Captain, propulsion just came back online!" Helmsman Ensign Lee had regained consciousness and was attempting to help with her job, but her left arm was broken in several places, her right wrist was sprained, and both collarbones were broken. Her head pounded from a light concussion and there was a bit of blood that trickled from her mouth if she coughed—and she felt like she need to cough often. She suspected that she had a broken bone that had punctured a lung.

"Transferring helm control to the captain!" Captain Walker announced. Her muscles were sore and there were several of them torn and she had a compound fracture in her left leg, but other than that she was functional. She was in extreme pain, but she was still functional.

"Captain has the helm!" Ensign Lee replied.

Outside the windows of the bridge all that could be seen was the glowing fires and streaming plasmas and shock waves from structures and edges across the two ships. The CO wasn't exactly sure which direction she should go, but adding some horizontal component to their fall couldn't hurt and it might push them past the city below.

"Full forward," Fullback said, engaging the engines. The ship began pushing forward further into the Seppy rust bucket that was now about to break into several larger pieces. She kept the throttle at max, driving the ship deeper and deeper into the hauler. The ship sung with a ringing, banging, clanking, and metal-on-metal screeching.

"Captain, Sensor Engineer Lieutenant JG Morgen Kirby has repaired the power to the main sensor array. I've got forward sensors and navigation!"

"Give me a continuous feed on our trajectory," Fullback ordered. Her crew members were nothing more than brilliant heroic gods and she loved every last one of them like the children she never had.

"Aye sir!" The injured ensign moved her right hand about her console as best she could and what she couldn't do that way, she did through her AIC.

The trajectory of the falling ships went online in the CO's DTM virtual mindview. Their present trajectory had them crashing just across the top of the main dome at Mons City and into the southeast where the Churchill had gone down. Fullback added ten percent upward force to the propulsion to see how the ship would react. The hauler began to collapse upward along the outer decks and metal buckled like a flimsy empty beer can. Fullback added more z-direction acceleration upping it to twenty-five percent. Secondary explosions and superheated plasma vented from failing systems on the hauler's outer decks. The trajectory calculations showed that they might just miss the southeastern dome by a slim margin if they could maintain the propulsion. The ships continued to screech and tear each other apart, but the supercarrier was faring far better than the Seppy rust bucket. The structural integrity fields were doing their jobs and holding the American warship together.

"Going to full z accel!" Fullback said and put all the propulsion power into the upward direction. The Separatist hauler finally collapsed under the strain and buckled completely. A seam formed along a large buckling ripple in the center of the vehicle and then it tore itself apart. The larger aft half tumbled loose and the lower one simply peeled itself apart. Debris from the hauler's breakup smacked into the bridge windows and across the deck and exterior hull and in some cases pieces actually penetrated the hull and stuck there. But the U.S.S. Margaret Thatcher broke free of the hauler and began to rise away from the broken up Seppy ship.

"Great flying, ma'am!" Ensign Lee yelled triumphantly.

"We ain't out of the woods yet, Ensign!" The CO continued pouring all of the ship's normal-space acceleration power into the upward axis, buying them more time before they impacted the surface. The probable trajectories in her head now were showing that the Thatcher would miss the domes, but pieces of the hauler were going to scatter very close to the southeast dome. The southeast dome had been compromised anyway so if it had more damage it wouldn't be as devastating. Besides that, the Thatcher had done all she could to protect the Martian city. It was time to think about herself and her crew for once. The Iron Lady of the fleet had done her job.

Captain, I've gone through all the possibilities. There is no way to pull the ship out of the fall and maintain flight. The best option is a controlled crash, her AIC informed her.

I figured as much.

Any suggestions?

Yes, crash down the mountain.

Of course! Good idea. Give me a trajectory?

It would be easier for me to take the helm.

Right. Captain's AIC take the helm.

Aye sir! AIC has the helm!

"All hands brace for impact!" the captain announced over the intercom.

"Holy . . . " Alexander Moore began but was speechless from the sight. The glowing fireball split into several pieces. Some had fallen just south of the dome nearest them and threw dust plumes into the air. The fire falling from the sky scattered the retreating Separatist soldiers that were still trying to put up a fight, but this was the final straw that weakened them to the point that there was no longer any cohesive attack grouping of them. The Seppies were down to single or handfuls of snipers scattered about with maybe a handful of tanks and mecha left. The air had been cleared out by the Killers and the Gods of War and by the last few contingents of mecha that dropped in. The ground battle on this side of the city was over and the majority of the American fighters and mecha had moved on to the main dome. But what amazed Senator Moore the most was the sight of a flaming United States Navy supercarrier bursting out of the midst of the plummeting fireball.

The supercarrier's path was stabilizing and stretching as far up the mountainside as it could. If it hit near them at that speed the secondary fall of debris would kill them all.

"Is it going to hit us, Alexander?" Sehera reached out to her husband's hand and held it for a second. Her daughter was inside one of the inflatable domes with her helmet off. She had needed a little break from the suit. "Should I grab Dee?"

"Naw. Look at it. I think it is going to try and sled down the mountain over there." He pointed at the giant flaming ship. He could ask the Marine second lieutenant or one of the SARs pilots but they were busy dragging wounded around. The reporters kept their camera on the crash and had moved to a slightly better vantage point atop BIL the garbage hauler, but Moore didn't want to talk with them right now either. "Let's just watch. I'm tired of acting right now."

"You did well, Alexander. Even the great President Sienna Madira wasn't as heroic," his wife said to him.

"You're biased, in more ways than one." Alexander smiled at his wife.

"Yes of course I am," Sehera smiled for a moment; a brief moment was all the remaining grim tasks would allow. They would soon need to get back to helping with the wounded and their break from this horrible messy day would be over. "Do you think there are people still on that thing?"

"There must be. That is a controlled crash and a damned smart one," Moore said.

The supercarrier impacted at about three-fourths of the way up the easternmost side of the mountain, a side that was unpopulated. Debris and dust and smoke plumed into the sky, creating reds and oranges in the early-evening sunlight that were breathtaking against the giant Martian mountain. The tough behemoth warship tore a gouge in the mountainscape as it sledded its way through rocks and soil and then it turned westward around the mountain toward them. There were flashes of secondary explosions and occasional glints of sunlight from flying chunks of metal, but after a long arduous ride of more than a hundred kilometers down the mountain the ship came to a stop less than twenty kilometers away.

"Somebody should get into touch with them and see if they need help," Sehera thought out loud. Then they were quiet. The two of them stood there in silence holding hands looking out across the devastation, dust storms, and the giant crashed supercarrier up the mountain.

"CO Madira! CO Thatcher!"

"Goddamn it's good to hear your voice, Fullback!" Captain Jefferson answered.

"Aye sir. We've got some serious damage and there are three dozen wounded on board that need attention. But we survived, sir. And we steered the hauler away from the city." Fullback's voice was clear but she sounded gruff, much more gruff than usual.

"Goddamned if you won't make admiral before I will," the CO said. "Are you in any shape to take on crew and wounded? We've got a lot of troops on the ground that could use some help."

"I'll put out a recall to the escape pods to return to duty, sir. We can't go anywhere right now, but we most certainly can take on wounded and act as a staging ground," Fullback replied.

"Great work, Sharon. Madira out!"

"CO, the Washington has DEGs back online and the Kolmogorov and Blair have propulsion and missile batteries back up. They are going full bore on the remaining Seppy ships," the XO reported. "The squadrons have pulled back to cover for the remaining fleet and are beginning to overwhelm the Seppy bastards, sir!"

"Roger that, XO." The CO had the battlescape continuously updating in his DTM virtual mindview and knew that the fleet ships were coming back online from the fact that they were starting to reengage the enemy. But he hadn't been watching the DEG and missile battery readiness readouts of those ships at the time. It was quite a pleasant surprise to see the brilliant blue-green bolts of directed energy blasting away at the two remaining Seppy ships.

"Looks like they're on the run, Captain. Just like that time at Triton last year," the COB added. "Army Starlifters are loaded and ready to go to ground, sir. And Colonel Warboys is reporting that he thinks it's clear for SARs to drop."

"Deploy them and have them stage back to the Thatcher's location."

"Aye sir." The COB nodded at the Air Boss. The Air Boss took the information from the Army squads as the COB passed it along via the AICs and issued deployment orders to the squads.

The Fleet Angels were already in space and immediately started dropping the SH-102 Starhawks in for search-and-rescue operations. The Army Starlifter squads would drop in on the Army M3A17 tank squads and either resupply or load and transport them to the staging grounds depending on the needs of the ground commanders. Typically once the Starlifters were deployed the battles were well in hand. Captain Jefferson was glad that this battle was finally coming to a close.

"Senator. Mrs. Moore." Vulcan stretched her arms and legs as she stepped up behind them. Alexander hadn't heard the SARs pilot come up behind him and it startled him some. His nerves were shaky as hell from the events of the day.

"Shit, Lieutenant, don't sneak up on me like that." He smiled at her.

"Sorry, sir. Thought you would like to know that we've got full-up coms open again. The naval base up the mountain has been retaken and most of the Seppy forces on the ground are dead. What is left of the 34th Marine Mecha division that had originally been deployed in the northwest domes have regrouped with several Army squads and are taking the main dome back as we speak," the Starhawk pilot told him.

"What about up there?" Moore nodded toward the sky.

"The tides have turned there too. But they are still fighting."

"Lieutenant, shouldn't somebody help them out?" Sehera pointed to the crashed supercarrier.

"Unbelievably, ma'am, they are in pretty good shape. In fact, what I came to tell you is that we are about to move this staging area to there. That ship has a full hospital facility in it. There are no doctors there but they are on the way." Vulcan pointed to the east at the swarm of escape pods that were descending on the crashed supercarrier and about the same time several Starhawks screamed overhead, flying westward toward the dead-mecha-littered battlefield.

"Then we should go with you to help," Sehera told the young rescue pilot.

"Thanks, ma'am. Don't take it the wrong way, but there are trained professionals landing there now that can work more efficiently without you," Vulcan said. Sehera looked as if she were about to let the young pilot have it, so Alexander stepped in.

"You're right, Lieutenant. But we might can help with morale and to keep the press at bay. Although, now that the long-range is back up, that will soon get to be a full-time effort. We should go with you," Senator Moore said with Southern politician's charm.

"Yes, sir."