Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [26]
“You can’t nail down a source?”
“Well, not precisely.” He pointed at a screen, which the lieutenant recognized as a map layout of the station and its surrounding terrain. “But there’s a power surge here, to the west, about six, seven klicks away. If I had to take a guess, I’d say that’s where it’s comin’ from. But look at the screen. We got bogeys movin’ all over the place.”
Jackson could see them: more than a dozen little spots blipping on the green screen, maneuvering slowly on all sides of the station. One by one they would dart closer and then halt.
“It looks like they’re advancing on us, covering each other,” he guessed.
“Yes, sir, that’d be my guess, too,” said the radioman.
The officer considered the screen. He pointed to a blur of lines behind the ring of moving figures. “This is where the power seems to be coming from?” he asked.
“My best estimate is yes,” Dobson replied.
“All right,” Jackson said, making up his mind. “Let’s get the Team geared up. We’re going to go for a walk in the dark.”
Five: Counterattack
The sun was cresting the eastern horizon of Mars when the SEALS filed out of the small air lock on the north side of the station. Jackson was not displeased by this. Since the target was to the west, they’d be approaching out of the sunrise, at least for a while. They didn’t know what they were going up against, but Jackson was getting used to that.
Over the silent but eloquent objections of Master Chief Ruiz and Ensign Sanders, the lieutenant had told them to keep an eye on the station and all its approaches. He wanted an officer and senior enlisted man he knew he could depend on to be at the base covering his back. One shooter Team also had been ordered to stay behind to help out with any defensive requirements.
That meant there were eight men available to investigate and, he hoped, attack the signal center Falco had detected just over the horizon. They would follow a nearly straight depression, a ravinelike trench that carved a gouge across the Martian surface. It lay just a few hundred meters north of MS1 and conveniently extended almost in a beeline toward the target, passing a few hundred meters to the north of their destination as far as he could tell.
The SEALS burst out of the open air lock and dashed across the intervening distance in single file, each man vanishing into the low gulley as soon as he reached it. Jackson watched them all, and when the seventh—Harry Teal—had ducked over the rim of the ravine, the lieutenant raced after them, tumbling over the steep bank and dropping the three or four meters into the smooth bottom of the natural trench.
Each member of the Team was heavily loaded, carrying the full-G equivalent of some 250 pounds of equipment strapped to his back, shoulders, hips, and buttocks. Of course, in the Martian gravity the actual weight was considerably less, but as the SEALS were rapidly learning through experience, they still had to account for the incredible mass of the loads, which made turning and stopping unusually risky maneuvers. Jackson himself stumbled and lumbered forward, bumping into the far side of the trench before he could break the momentum of his leap. Judging from the grins on the faces of his men, he wasn’t the only one who had come in with a rough landing.
They set out in single file, with Chief Harris taking the point and Falco, with his “squirrel gun,” coming next. Jackson took the third spot in the line, and the rest of the group trailed out with some twenty meters between every two men. They moved without speaking. Jackson had made it clear that the unknown, unseen enemy might well be capable of discovering them simply by monitoring the electrical signals of their communicators, and so the devices had been turned off since they’d left the station.
Dobson’s estimate had been six or seven klicks to the target, and the SEALS were determined to cross that distance in short order. They moved at a trot, grateful for the smooth ground underfoot and the straight routing of the trench. The rays of the sun illuminated the rim