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looked as if he'd make it, but then he fell. Deadeye
Dick was at Number Eighteen, with Eskimo Nell looking coldly on. The song
stopped. There wasn't any need for it; once the fight starts you don't think.
You just do what you have to.
The dust helped; they couldn't know how many they were fighting. They tried to
circle around us, but on that broken ground men afoot were as fast as any
tractor. And they were not Marsmen. They had been trained to fight on Earth,
where they had helicopters, where a man couldn't vanish in deep shadow and be
hidden five feet from you and you never know it. We crept among them, using
knives in the dark shadow, leaving them to find their comrades with their
hoses cut, blood spurting from their ruined lungs.
Before long they were as afraid as we were. And we couldn't run: without the
power station, we'd be out of air inside a few hours. We couldn't run, but
they could - as long as they had their tractors.
I realized that and we concentrated on the vehicles. Crawl through the rocks
until you can get a shot at a tractor. Fire the rocket launcher and retreat,
leaving the tractor disabled; and let the Feddies wonder how they'll get out
when the last tractors are gone.
They moved their vehicles out of range. Now it was hand-to-hand
among the broken rocks. A
concentrated charge would have broken through, but they never did that. They
came in little groups, trying to infiltrate.
But they could lose ten to our one, and they'd still win. We were forced back
into a tighter and tighter perimeter. I had no count on how many I had left.
Twenty? A dozen? I looked at my watch. Incredibly, two hours had passed since
the fight had begun.
They broke past us at two places. I had no choice now. "Into the station," I
ordered. We crept in, through the holes we'd blown in the tunnels earlier in
the morning, and waited. It was quiet out there.
Wilson was gone. I called my communications man. "Cet into the control room
and tell Kehiayan to stand by. We'll have to blow this place."
"They haven't come in," Doug said. "What are they waiting for?"
"Don't know. What are you waiting for? Move -"
"Kind of hate to give up just now."
They still weren't coming. We were crouched in the tunnel, weapons facing the
entrance. Then there was a bright flash of light out there. I could only see
the light, not what caused it. There was another.
Something had exploded just at the entrance. I felt the ground shake.
There was a man at the entrance. Six rifles aimed at him, but he came in with
his hands high, waving the red flag of Free Mars.
The relief force had come.
FOURTEEN
We brought the uranium back to Ice Hill. We were greeted as heroes. Saviors of
Free Mars. So naturally when I put in for a transfer to a nice, safe,
rear-area solar cell production facility, it was granted.
Like hell. The trouble with armies is the screwups get the soft jobs; do
something right and they tag you for another hairy mission. To make it worse,
although they did give me a couple of weeks soft duty around Ice Hill, it
didn't do much good, because they put Erica on the goddamn atom bomb
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design project. Here I went and got their uranium and they used it
as an excuse to put my girl to work twenty-three hours a day.
We got another benefit out of Deucalion: Marsport had to talk to us. They
didn't quite recognize us as a legal government, but what could they do? They
had to have the power from Deucalion. The Feddie government might have thought
different, but the big companies had no doubts. They needed that power.
If it took negotiating with a bunch of criminals, then that's what it took.
We didn't need a big garrison to hold the power station. Sentries could see
any attack as soon as it crossed the crater rim - and we made sure Mars
Industries Association knew what our commander's instructions were: don't
fight for the station, blow it up and run like hell. Blackmail on the grand
scale, but it worked.
Our raid had been successful, and something to be proud of, but it wasn't the
key event of the war.
While we were taking the station, another crew had captured the Federation's
orbiting spaceship. Free
Mars had a navy.
That was a complicated operation, carried out by Marsmen who'd had
experience in space.
Commander Farr had planned to lead it himself and would have if his physician [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]