Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [20]
“Okay, Dennis,” Jackson said. “When G-Man is ready, we all open up on the air lock.”
“As good a plan as any,” Ensign Sanders said.
“Gun’s up,” G-Man said. He had the big rail gun cradled in his arms, his G15 carbine leaning against the cover next to him. Derek Falco, G-Man’s shooting partner, was crouched next to him, his own G15 up and ready.
“Let’s ring their bell,” Jackson said.
Leaning out slightly from the cover, Jackson pulled the trigger on his G15, whose selector was set on fully automatic. Next to him, Chief Harris and Falco added their fire to the din. Streams of tungsten-core projectiles smashed into the hatch of the air lock, sparks flying as bits of alloy were knocked off and heated to incandescence by friction.
Instantly, the alien weapon opened fire. Heavy shells impacted on the tarp and detonated against the metal boxes and their contents.
Bellowing a warning shout, “Fire in the hole!” LaRue triggered his weapon as he brought it to bear on the target.
Even over the vibrations of the explosions, the loud pulse of G-Man’s Mark IV reverberated, the backblast a bright counterpoint to the green flash of the copper slug.
Whatever the alien weapon was, the ammunition it fired did not react well to being hit by copper metal heated to almost the plasma state from the impact. The cover around the weapon gave no real resistance to the uranium penetrator. The energy from the metal spray was more than enough to detonate the remaining ammunition in the enemy magazines.
A fiery explosion erupted, eerily silent but for the dull thud they all felt through the ground. Flames, metal fragments, and bits of unidentifiable scraps vomited out of the partially open air lock as if fired from a huge cannon. Even in the thin Martian atmosphere, the explosion was enough to knock G-Man to the ground.
Stunned, Jackson got up from where he also had been knocked down by the blast.
“I don’t think we’re going to find a lot of prisoners after that,” Falco said almost to himself, his quiet voice loud over the comlink in the ringing silence after the explosion.
Four: It’s Personal Now
“We have to get back to MS1 immediately!” Consul Char-Kane declared. “This information is crucial! The Assarn are at large on this planet in unknown numbers, and their intentions are clearly hostile. The menace to your people, to your whole world, is too great to ignore!”
“You can make a report by radio. We’re not going yet,” Jackson replied coldly.
“But the physical proof. We’ll need to carry it—”
“Listen, ma’am,” the lieutenant said. “Four brave men died out there. They were SEALS, and they were our Teammates. They’re coming home with us.”
“But—?” The Shamani woman looked genuinely puzzled. “They’re dead! Surely you know that?”
The expression on his face as hard as chilled steel, Jackson turned away without allowing himself to speak further. She was still talking when he closed the hatch behind him and met the rest of the men inside the pressurized mess hall. He found the unit’s hospital corpsman, Harry Teal.
“Harry. You and Falco take the Gamma rover. See if there’s anything you can do for Murphy, Price, Jones, and Kim.” As he said the names, Jackson pictured each of his Teammates and understood, as did Corpsman Harry Teal, that the only thing to be done for them was to bring their bodies back with them.
Since that was the only thing to be done, that was what would be done.
“Right, LT,” Teal replied.
The two SEALS headed out to one of the two surviving undamaged rovers, and Jackson turned his attention back to the Shamani woman, who had followed him with the tenacity of a bull terrier.
“Go ahead and call in your report. Give them all the data you can. But physical evidence! What, are you planning on dragging half of one of those bodies back with us?”
She flushed. “No.” After a moment’s thought, she touched her wrist computer, which, like all the Mark III space suit units, was equipped with a high-resolution