Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [62]
Even as the body was falling, Marannis darted up the ramp and into the hull of the nearest transport. At the same time, the engines of the other craft turned over, quickly winding up to full power. Breaking away from the cover at the side of the clearing, Ensign Sanders ran to where he could see the rear ramp on the other craft starting to rise. The downward-firing jets kicked up dirt and debris, sending a blinding cloud into the young officer’s face.
He thumbed his weapon to full automatic as he pulled the trigger back and held it. One long thudding burst hissed out of the suppressor, heating it so much that the rising waves almost burned the ensign’s face. Behind him, he could feel more than hear Robinson’s weapon adding its firepower to his. The ramp kept closing, but now there was smoke starting to come out of the inside of the craft, and dozens of tungsten-core projectiles tore into the electronics, machinery, and fuel containers inside the hull.
The ship started to lift off, canting away from them as the adjustable nozzles of the jet engines began to swivel backward. Tongues of flame shot along the ground, igniting even the damp brush, and Sanders shifted his aim, pouring rounds right into the whirling turbine of the jet engine. Smoke spewed thick and heavy as the whining engine abruptly lurched and sputtered. It shrieked to a halt, and the transport toppled sideways, landing near the edge of the clearing and bursting into flames.
Whoever was inside that craft was facing an inferno, and they certainly wouldn’t be going anywhere. The sound of the engine died away, and the smoke continued to pour out from the interior. No flames were showing, but the acrid stink told all the men around the clearing that there couldn’t be much of anything alive inside that craft unless it was wearing a full exposure suit, something that was possible but not very likely.
Marannis, meanwhile, came back down the ramp of the second ship. That transport had escaped damage, and as the scout knelt to wipe his bloody knife on some large leaves, Sanders knew that they wouldn’t find any living Eluoi inside.
Instead, it looked like the SEALS were now the owners of at least one working enemy transport ship.
Eleven: A Trip to Town
“How do I look?” Ensign Sanders asked. He was wearing a captured Eluoi uniform garnished with gold braid on the sleeves. They had found the undamaged garment in a storage locker aboard the captured transport aircraft. It fit the young ensign perfectly, though he had been spending a few minutes trying to adjust the white silken turban on his head.
“Like a desert sheik ready for his wedding night,” Master Chief Ruiz opined solemnly to a general chorus of agreement.
“Or maybe the valet parking supervisor at the Beverly Hills Holiday Inn,” Jackson suggested.
“I think you look like a surgeon, ready to operate,” Dr. Sulati noted, not unkindly.
“He’s an unmarried member of the Teams, ma’am,” Jackson pointed out. “He’s always ready to operate.”
The light mood did not alleviate the tension wracking the castaways. Jackson found himself looking at the sky, listening for some sign of the jet engine that would signal the return of Falco and Consul Char-Kane—and the captured transport craft that had launched, ten minutes earlier, on a high-risk test flight.
The ambush and the aftermath, he had to admit, could not have worked much better. These Eluoi may have been hell on wheels as far as deep space and extraplanetary combat went, but for close-quarters combat on their own ground, they seemed never to have suspected that it could really happen. They needed an education in unconventional war-fare, something the SEALS would teach them at the graduate level.
Marannis had taken out the two pilots in a quick rush of the cockpit, capturing the aircraft intact and undamaged. The Teammates