Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [27]
The Team jogged for half an hour, each man hearing only the mechanical rasp of his own breathing. The pressure suits were tiny galaxies, with the thin, lethal Martian atmosphere separating each man from the others. Without even the radio communicators to keep in touch with one another, the men’s thoughts turned inward, to memory and training and determination. Each one held thoughts of the four dead men prominent in his mind, and each vowed, silently and privately and yet utterly in union with the others, that those deaths would be avenged.
After the thirtieth minute Harris held up his hand, fist closed, to order a halt. Every man went down to one knee, drawing deep breaths, taking advantage of the halt to rest, to prepare for the action about to commence.
Jackson moved forward, clapping Falco on the shoulder as he passed, joining Chief Harris in the point position. Several square boulders had broken away from the side of the ravine just before them, and the officer nodded in understanding: Harris had stopped here because there was a good route up and out of the natural trench.
But first they had to see what was up there. Carefully finding solid steps for each foot, Jackson eased himself up until he was crouched just below the rim of the depression. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he raised his head until just his eyes were above ground level.
The rays of the rising sun slanted almost horizontally across the flat ground, and that was the only thing that allowed him to make out the details. He could see a low, flat dome exactly the color of the Martian surface but too perfect, too symmetrical to be natural. For a long minute he stared at the place and finally was rewarded by a glimpse of movement.
And this was no goddamn robot! He saw one, then a couple more, men walking around the perimeter of the huge structure. They wore pressure suits and helmets but were too far away for him to distinguish any other details. They could be Assarn, or Shamani, or humans from Earth for all he knew, but they were mortal targets, and they were involved with whatever was going wrong on Mars.
The lieutenant spent a little more time eyeing the terrain. The dome was a good half klick away from his current position but not as far from the ravine if they were to continue on. Provided that they could find another point of egress from the trench, they could pull to within perhaps 150 or 200 meters before attacking.
There was no doubt in Jackson’s mind that the SEALS were going to attack. He dropped back to the ravine floor and used a simple hand signal to get the men to follow him. He noticed several other points of erosion or collapse—there seemed to be one every twenty to fifty meters—so he continued until they reached the closest point of approach to the enemy installation.
Only then did Jackson creep up the side for another look. He could see the place more clearly now and counted a half dozen men, each wearing a suit with a transparent helmet that looked more or less like the SEALS’ pressure suits. Each of the men was carrying a long weapon, but they were not familiar to the officer; that was clear enough proof that these men came from somewhere else.
Somewhere damned far away from Earth.
This was the kind of close combat the SEALS were known for, trained for. They would strike from the shadows and eliminate the enemy before he ever knew they were there. There was no braggadocio in Jackson’s mind when he directed his men against the station and the enemy surrounding it; there couldn’t be. He already had lost a quarter of his command, a terrible blow to him and his men. But they had a chance to make the enemy pay for what they had done and to continue the mission and find out who had been attacking the Terran facilities on Mars. The fact that a number of the enemy might be killed—well, that was just a pleasant bonus.
At their lieutenant’s unspoken