“Almost…got it…shit! Can’t feel…a thing…through these…damned gloves…”
Kaminski dropped to the sand outside the airlock, Doc Casey’s knife at the ready.
“Here she goes!” Jacob yelled, and then the inner hatch was sliding away as a swiftly strengthening wind blasted out into the airlock. A swirl of loose paper and garbage followed—a couple of readymeal packets, some plastic wrapping, an empty memclip case—and then the hurricane was past and an armored figure with a light blue helmet was swinging into view, framed in the open hatch.
Garroway had been gambling that however many men there were aboard the Mars cat, most would not have their armor on. The stuff was bulky and uncomfortable and made such essential details as urination a tedious chore—or forced the wearer to wire himself up with uncomfortable plastic plumbing. Someone, at least, would be in armor at all times in case of an emergency…but the whole plan would go seriously wrong if several of them happened to have been wearing their suits.
The EVA-suited man in the hatch, staggering a bit still from the shock of the abrupt decompression of the cat’s cabin, was raising a French FA-29 assault rifle to his shoulder. Garroway was already in position, the Ruger pointed straight at the UN trooper’s helmet visor. He squeezed his hand almost convulsively; he felt nothing through the glove, heard nothing in the thin air but a sharp snap, but a white star appeared squarely in the center of the dark visor, and the soldier dropped his rifle, staggering back, groping at his face.
Garroway leaped into the cabin, colliding with the downed man as he thrashed on the deck and nearly falling. Regaining his balance, he swung left, checking the cabin’s rear, then right, toward the control deck. He saw three other men, all down, all unarmored, all clutching faces or throats as they desperately tried to breathe.
“I’m in,” he yelled over the tactical channel. “Four down! Jacob! Seal the hatch!”
“Working on it, Major.”
The inner hatch slid shut a moment later, but it was too slow…too slow. The three unsuited men were still now, or nearly so. The suited man continued to claw at his visor. Garroway knelt beside him, trying to keep his hands away from the starred plastic. Several of the high-velocity fléchettes had penetrated the visor, their finned tails sticking out of the tough plastic like tiny arrows, but air was seeping through myriad tiny cracks. As the gas expanded, it grew cold, and a layer of frost was forming around the impact point. Water was condensing on the inside of the visor, and bubbling wildly through one of the larger cracks. The life-support indicator set into a pop-open recess in the man’s chest armor showed his suit’s pressure at a quarter bar and falling, his heart and respiration dangerously high and shallow.
Garroway fumbled at his armor’s utility kit. If he could get a patch in place, he might save the man’s life…but to do that he would have to pull the fléchettes out, and the suit would decompress completely in those few seconds, even if he managed not to shatter the plastic.
The man’s eyes, just visible through frost and dark plastic, were panic-wide and bleeding. He clutched at Garroway’s wrist as the Marine tried to tamp down a pressure seal around the cluster of fléchettes…but before he could complete the task, the man’s life-support indicators flatlined.
“I think the poor bastard’s had it,” Kaminski said. Garroway started. He’d not realized the other Marine had entered the cat.
With the short, sharp fight over, Garroway felt numb, barely alive himself. He’d not been in a firefight for a good many years, and he’d managed to forget how terrifying the experience was…and how much he disliked it. He hadn’t even been shot at, but his senses had been keyed to such a high pitch that now, as the adrenaline rush receded, he could hardly stand.
Kaminski was checking the other bodies. All showed the bruised faces, the blood at nose, mouth, eyes, and ears characteristic of explosive decompression.
Not a pleasant way to die at all….
Garroway forced himself to keep moving, keep working, as he checked through the cat to make sure they’d caught all of the UN troops. The interior of the Mars cat was about the same size and shape as the inside of a large recreational trailer. There were four bunks aft, and a doorway leading to the supply lockers and fuel-cell storage. Forward was a tiny galley, a sitting area, and the forward command suite, which included the driver’s seat and a small communications console on the cab’s right side.
Sergeant Jacob was already sliding into the chair at the communications console. One of the dead men lay sprawled at his feet. “Hey, Major? Today’s our lucky day!”
“What’s that?”
“Doesn’t look like they got a message off.”
Garroway leaned over the Marine’s shoulder, studying the main screen. The unit was set for satcom relay, and the screen showed the cryptic legend SATLINK ACQUISITION and the winking word SEARCHING. One of four smaller display monitors above the console showed an image—the inside of the hab module, as viewed from one corner of the room, high up near the ceiling. The fuzzy image showed Lieutenant King talking to three other Marines. They had missed a bug, then…though it fortunately had been positioned far enough away from the table that the UN troops wouldn’t have been able to overhear their planning sessions.
“Let’s see if we can get an uplink,” Garroway told Jacob. The younger Marine’s fingers flicked across the touch screen on the console, tapping in a chain of commands. A moment later, the SATLINK ACQUISITION line was updated with a CONNECT: MARSCOMSAT4 and a passcode entry blank.
Garroway stared at the screen for an unpleasant moment. All nonmilitary communications on Mars had used a programmed passcode; the human operators didn’t need to enter a tiling. If the computer was demanding a code entry now, it was because someone had added it. He’d seen Bergerac insert a computer memory clip in the com console back at Cydonia. “Try the standard passcode,” he told Jacob.
Jacob complied, and a new line appeared on-screen.
PASSCODE INCORRECT; ENTER PASSCODE:——
He’d been right. The UN had changed the access codes for all communications links on Mars, and not just the military ones, either. It only made sense. The key to any successful coup was communications; Bergerac and the Joubert woman obviously wanted to keep the takeover on Mars a secret, at least for now, and the only way to do that was to lock up the Marines and take over all communications on the planet. By changing and then controlling the access codes, they could do just that.
“What do you think, Sarge?” he asked. “Can you hack it?”
Jacob shook his head. “I could try, sure…but you know what kind of wall we’re up against here, sir. Without a trapdoor or the code key back at Cydonia or Candor, I could sit here for a century or two typing in random alphanumerics and never get anywhere.”
“Okay. See what you can do, anyway. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”
“Yeah, and maybe we can fly this thing back to Earth,” Jacob replied, but he immediately began tapping away at the touchscreen.
Kaminski had finished checking the bodies. “I’ve got their IDs and stuff, sir,” he said, holding out a handful of tags.
Garroway accepted them without comment, slipping them into a thigh pocket in his suit. They would be returned to Bergerac or some other senior UN representative when this was all over.
He was troubled on several counts, not the least of which was the blunt and bloody fact that if a war started now, he couldn’t be entirely certain whether the UN had started it by imprisoning the Marine section…or whether he had by killing four UN soldiers. His orders—to “protect American scientific and research interests on the planet Mars”—were unsatisfyingly vague when it came to reactions against hostile or potentially hostile UN moves.
He’d